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RHODE ISLAND 

Historical Tracts 

NO. 15. 


THE 

PLANTING AND GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE, 

HENRY C. DORR. 

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RHODE ISLAND 

Historical Tracts. 



PROVIDENCE 

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Copyright by 
SIDNEY S. RIDER. 
1 879 . 


PROVIDENCE PRESS COMPANY, PRINTERS 


THE 


PLANTING AND GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE 


ILLUSTRATED IX THE 


GRADUAL ACCUMULATION OF THE MATERIALS FOR DOMESTIC 
COMFORT, THE MEANS OF INTERNAL COMMUNI¬ 
CATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
LOCAL INDUSTRIES. 


RV 


HENRY (’. DORR. 
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PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
SIDNEY S. RIDER. 
1882. 


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Copyright by 

SIDNEY S. RIDER. 


1882 . 


PUBLISHER’S NOTE. 


It is with pleasure that the publisher lays before his readers 
the following Tract. It is the result of careful and laborious 
research among the musty records of ancient days, supplemented 
by extensive reading. No one, unless he has performed such 
labor, knows the slow progress one makes in its prosecution. 
These facts are culled from many hundreds of references. The 
defective condition of the Public Records renders it impossible 
to obtain from that source all the information of this character 
which one desires, and expects there to find. Many authorities 
have been given, and nothing but a desire to keep the size of the 
Tract within reasonable limits, has prevented the introduction 
of more such references. The publisher has reason to believe 
that the author’s labors have been most careful, and faithful, 
and that his statements may be implicitly relied upon as true his¬ 
tory. All books contain'errors, and this doubtless, will be no 
exception to the rule, notwithstanding every effort to make it as 
accurate and minute as possible. The publisher claims for it 
that it sets forth in a pleasant way the early history of Provi¬ 
dence, and that its readers will learn from it many pleasant 
things which they did not before know, and could with difficulty 
find out. If this proves to be the result of its publication 
both the author and the publisher will be repaid. 



































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THE PLANTING AND GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE. 


American history has many examples of a want 
of political foresight which has extended its influence 
to distant generations. One of the earliest of these 
is afforded by the conduct of Massachusetts towards 
the settlers of Rhode Island. " The Bay people ” 
had always coveted the shores and islands of Narra- 
gansett, and the time had nearly come when they 
might have quietly appropriated them. Had the 
Puritan magistrates and elders been patient with dis- 
putes which could be but temporary, the very men 
who were thrust out of Massachusetts would gladly 
have occupied Mooshassuc and Acquetneck, by her 
authority and in her name. Charles I. was suffi¬ 
ciently occupied with domestic troubles, and gave 
little heed to her proceedings. The Puritan govern¬ 
ments which succeeded his, would have confirmed all 



2 


INTRODUCTION. 


acts of their favorite colony, and Charles II. would 
not have annulled them. But when the distractions 
of Rhode Island seemed to render its separate exist¬ 
ence impossible (1643) the government of Massa¬ 
chusetts treated the reveries of Gorton as crimes. 
When the settlers at Acquetneck were nearly ready 
to unite with Plymouth, and Williams, in a moment 
of despondency, seemed doubtful as to the result, 
Massachusetts lost no opportunity to assure those 
who had fled from her intolerance, of what they 
might expect from a reunion. 1 Had her policy been 
more lenient, her strength as a colony and as a state 
would have been vastly augmented .2 The harbour 
of Newport would have fallen, at an early day, to 
the keeping of men able to use its advantages, 
instead of being destitute of shipping during two 
generations. The power of Massachusetts in the 
Union would have been more decisive and enduring, 
and our national history, in some particulars, unlike 
what it now is. 

1. See the case of the Baptist Holmes, August, 1651. 

2. Williams to Winthrop, Sept. 23, 1648, (“ 23d, 7th, 48, so called”). Ports¬ 
mouth was inclined to join Plymouth, Williams “ kept himself unengaged.” 
Williams’s letter, Narragansett Club’s edition, pp. 153-4. 


INTRODUCTION. 


3 


But this wisdom was not given to the elders of 
"the Bay.” This narrow territory, which they had 
not the forecast to secure, was all that remained 
unclaimed on the Atlantic seaboard. The founder of 
Providence Plantations had not the privilege of 
choosing any other home. When he left England, 
Williams did not meditate of the foundation of a 
colony, or even of a town. He was never ambi¬ 
tious, and was content with an obscure position. 
Had he not been forced into one which was both 
unexpected and unwelcome, he would now only 
excite antiquarian curiosity as a writer of forgotten 
tracts. He sought in Mooshassuc only a home, and 
the quiet enjoyment of his own opinions, perhaps 
with no other society than that of his Indian neigh¬ 
bours. When he had crossed the Seekonk, an 
enlargement of his plan beyond his original concep¬ 
tions was forced upon him. Having gained a foot¬ 
hold by the grants of friendly Sachems, he laid with 
such instruments as were at his command—and 
some of them very indifferent ones — the foundation 
of "Providence Plantations.” 

During Williams’s sojourn on the east side of the 


4 


THE WILDERNESS. 


Seekonk he had not been inattentive to the resources 
of the unclaimed region on the opposite shore. He 
must have known the spring toward which he 
directed his canoe, and where he made his first land¬ 
ing. When he had built his wigwam, and refreshed 
himself by the waters, he climbed, with Harris and 
Olney, the first surveyors of our primitive wilder¬ 
ness, to the summit of the eastern hill-side, directly 
above his dwelling-place, for a wider view of their 
new home. From an eminence of nearly two hun¬ 
dred feet they looked westward through the openings 
of the oak-woods, over an estate which, to an unbi¬ 
ased observer, must have seemed rather picturesque 
than promising. " The Great Salt River ” flowed far 
below, broad and unconfined. On the east, it was 
bordered by ancient forest trees, and on the west by 
deep marshes studded with islands overgrown with 
coarse grass, and nearly covered by every spring 
tide. At the head of the bay the channel widened 
into a cove, with a broad gravelly beach on the east 
and north, and a border of salt marshes on the west. 
It received, on its northern side, two small and slug¬ 
gish rivers, each with its own environment of swamp 


THE WILDERNESS. 


5 


and wood land. One of these, the Mooshassuc, 
gave its name to the adjoining region. Still farther 
westward low sand hills, scantily covered with piues, 
rose above the marsh. Beyond these, unpromising 
ridges of rock and gravel stretched along the western 
horizon and shut in the view. On its western side, 
the hill upon which our explorers stood, ascended 
abruptly from the very margin of the " Salt River,” 
but sloped, with an easy descent, to the Seekonk, 
nearly a mile away on the east. Both its eastern 
and western hill-sides were thickly wooded with 
" eminent trees ” of oak and cedar. Both declivities 
were well watered, but the rains of centuries had 
well nigh washed away whatever fertilizing princi¬ 
ples the soil of the western hill-side had once pos¬ 
sessed, and it promised only a scanty return to the 
labours of the settlers. But when our eager ob¬ 
servers turned their steps northward toward the 
streams which poured their turbid waters into the 
cove, and enjoyed their first view of the natural 
meadows, "up streams without limits for the use of 
cattle,” 1 and thence looked southward over the Paw- 

1. See Williams’s purchase deed. (R. I. Col. Rec., VI., p. 18.) 


6 


THE WILDERNESS. 


tuxet valley, ready to be converted into corn lands 
and pastures, a sense of relief came over them as to 
the prospects of the new plantation. Descending 
among the rocks and through the pine woods, for a 
closer inspection of the shore, the hearts of the exiles 
were made glad by the discovery of great beds of 
clams, bordering the east side of the "Salt River” and 
of the cove, and of oysters whose flavour took away 
any lingering regret for the shell-fish of Massachu¬ 
setts. Still farther observation showed ample sup¬ 
plies of pigeons and other wild birds, and of fish, 
some varieties of which were unknown to the waters 
of Massachusetts Bay. Yet more cheering prospects 
were afforded by the salmon ascending the river, and 
by glimpses of the deer in the uplands. The settlers 
took heart. Banishment from the society of Puritan 
elders and magistrates was not without its allevia¬ 
tions. With cheerful courage they laid the founda¬ 
tions of a town,—without capital, without aid,— 
with little good-will or assistance from England, and 
with none whatever from their neighbours. 

It can scarcely be believed that if Williams had 
known the nature of the work which he had unwit- 


THE SETTLERS. 


7 


tingly begun he would have selected as his associates 
all the men who gathered around him. Many of 
them were addicted to the theological controversies 
of their day, to the exclusion of healthier and more 
practical ideas. They lacked unity of purpose, and 
the variety of pursuits needed in a new plantation. 
None of the settlers were from the professional or 
commercial classes; few were skilled mechanics. 
Blackstone, Williams’s only neighbour of liberal 
education, abstained from public affairs. Scarcely 
any, save Williams, had any political experience. 
Incidentally he speaks of J. T. 1 as having been an 
officer of an English municipal corporation, and as 
having some acquaintance with law .2 William Harris 
had, very probably, been an attorney or an attor¬ 
ney’s clerk. His books, letters and conduct indicate 
a legal knowledge beyond that of his contempora¬ 
ries. Francis Weston 3 was one of the deputies in 
the first General Court of Massachusetts. 4 No others 
had been conversant with matters of government. 

1. John Throckmorton. 2. George Fox Digged Out, p. 13. 

3. I. Backus’s History, p. 92. 

4. 14 May, 1634. II. Savage’s Winthrop, p. 130. 



8 


THE SETTLERS. 


Most of those who joined Williams at a later day 
had yet to acquire political knowledge in the school 
of experience. Some of them, as Chad Brown and 
Thomas Olney, though not graduates, had received 
some literary education. But the magistrates and 
elders of Massachusetts so steadily opposed rotation 
in office that an ordinary citizen might have lived long 
in that colony with little participation in its public 
affairs. 1 The founders of Providence may be excused 
for some errors of policy, as they were unpracticed 
in a work which was thrust upon them, — to be done 
with such instruments as were at their command. 

Even in its plan and aspect the settlement embo¬ 
died the ideas of men who dissented as widely from 
Massachusetts as Massachusetts had dissented from 
old England. The plantations did not grow up 
around a Puritan meeting-house as their centre, 
with the common graveyard of the settlers forming 
a part of the village green. Every building was 
secular, and separateness and independence showed 
themselves, even in the resting-places of the dead. 

1. See Winthrop’s Journal, May 25, 1636. Cotton’s answer to Williams, p. 63, 
Narragansett Club’s edition, note. 


THE SETTLERS. 


9 


The fields, the houses, and the barns of the planta¬ 
tions were the primitive places, both of secular and 
religious meetings. Nearly a century went by before 
the first steeple arose above the " Towne Strcete.” 1 

He who observes the persistency with which local 
or national character shows itself, even in minute 
diversities of practice, will remark that of the early 
settlements in Rhode Island not one had a Biblical 
name. The Rehoboths, Sharons, Gileads, Leban- 
ons, Carmels, which bestudded the maps of the 
Puritan colonies, and which indicated the source of 
their political ideas, found no place on the plat of 
Rhode Island. The name of Providence expresses 
the pious gratitude of its founder. Warwick keeps 
alive the memory of an early benefactor,— the only 
recompense which its settlers could give. English 
boroughs lent their names to other towns. To the 
good taste of the Antinomians of Newport we owe it 
that Rhode Island was not called Patmos , as Wil¬ 
liams had desired. 2 As civilized Englishmen, proud 
of their birthright, the founders rejected Indian 

1. King’s, now St. John’s Church, 1723. 

2. Williams to Winthrop, June, 1638. 


10 


THEIR RESOURCES. 


names for political communities, retaining them only 
for natural objects, as rivers and hills. During the 
first century royal names were in no greater request. 
Jamestown, Charlestown and Cumberland received 
their corporate titles when the days and much of 
the spirit of the original planters had passed away. 

In what manner Williams was enabled to accom¬ 
plish so much as he did remains one of the obscure 
passages of his life. 1 He had not been long in Provi¬ 
dence when he received a visit from Governor Wins¬ 
low, of Plymouth. The guest was touched by the 
hardship and poverty which his old friends were 
enduring, and at his departure put into the hands of 
Mrs. Williams a piece of gold for her relief. Wil¬ 
liams acknowledges with respect and gratitude the 
welcome gift. And yet a little later he was able to 
join with Winthrop in the purchase of Prudence,— 
to pay his share of the Indian gratuities customary 
on such occasions and to give to Canonicus a tribute 
which satisfied his demands. Williams was involved 
in great losses by the interruption of his business in 
Salem, consequent upon his banishment. He had 


1. See his letter to Mason, June 22,1670. 


THEIR RESOURCES. 


11 


great difficulty in recovering the moneys due him 
from debtors who continued sound in the Puritan 
faith. 1 He refers, with evident feeling, to the injus¬ 
tice done to him and to his family. 2 His circum¬ 
stances were, at times, very narrow, and his supplies 
of money were uncertain and irregular. In 1638, 3 
Governor Winthrop sent him provisions. He doubt¬ 
less thought that Williams had been harshly treated, 
and wished to do something to repair the damage 
which he had sustained. Hubbard, with his accus¬ 
tomed spitefulness, says: " Williams hath many 
times been an object of charity to divers persons of 
the Massachusetts that way disposed.” There is lit¬ 
tle probability of the truth of this assertion. Yet 
with all this Williams was the wealthiest settler of 
Providence. His companions had fewer resources 
than he, but they departed from Salem at their lei¬ 
sure, and could secure such property as they had. 
Those who came later to the plantations brought some 

1. Letters, Narragansett Club’s edition, pp. 65, 69, 81. 

2. Fourth series Massachusetts Historical Collections, volume 6. Winthrop 
Papers, pp. 211, 212, 240. Appendix to Bloody Tenent. Letter to Mason, 1670, 
pp. 336-7, Narragansett Club’s edition. 

3. February 28. Letters, p. 89. 


12 


FORESIGHT OF WILLIAMS. 


small supplies of money, but apparently none had 
more than was sufficient for the stock of a small 
farm. Devotion to religious ideas is generally an 
overmatch for pecuniary difficulties. But the pre¬ 
vailing theories of the plantations had no attractions 
for the wealthy, and the settlers were left unaided to 
a long struggle with evil fortune. 

Beginning his plantation under such adverse cir¬ 
cumstances, both from without and from within, 
Williams acted with caution and foresight. He 
knew the experience of the planters of Massachu¬ 
setts. Five years among them had not been thrown 
away. 1 The vessels of those days had but scanty 
accommodations, and little was known of the sani¬ 
tary requirements of man or beast. Nearly half of 
the cows and almost all the mares and goats had died 
at sea. Many of the remainder had perished during 
the first year, especially where there were no salt 
marshes. Those which strayed into the forests were 
devoured by wolves. The settlers could not afford 
the cost of fences to prevent their utter loss. Disas- 


1. See Prince’s Annals, 1630. Johnson’s Wonderworking Providence, Massa¬ 
chusetts Historical Collections, second series, volume 3, p. 159. 


PURCHASE OF PRUDENCE. 


13 


ters like these must be averted, and especially from 
a community which had so little to hope from its 
neighbours. Before he had gained a firm foothold 
on the main land Williams united with Governor 
Winthrop 1 in the purchase of the island of Pru¬ 
dence . 2 Here he kept goats and swine. They were 
safe from wolves, and could not escape into the 
woods. They were more hardy than sheep, required 
little attention, and had sufficient of marsh and 
upland in which to find their living. 

Williams was fortunate in an associate who was 
far more able than himself to repel any attack upon 
their title . 3 

Prudence Island was the market garden and stock 
farm of Providence during its early years. From 
thence Williams brought supplies in his canoe. 
The " Great Salt Kiver ” was the first highway of the 
Plantations. 

1. Williams’s letters, pp. 70, 78. R. I. Records, vol. I., p. 45. 

2. Nov. 10, 1637, is the date of the deed of Prudence. 

3. See R. I. Colonial Records, vol. I., p. 45, as to the purchase of Prudence. 
Williams to Winthrop, 15 Feb., 1654, as to goats, etc., stolen from Prudence. 
Williams’s letters, Narragansett Club, vol. VI., p. 78; Oct. 28, 1637, pp. 70,71; 
Nov. 10, 1637, pp. 78, 79. R. I. Historical Collections, vol. III., p. 29. Wil¬ 
liams to Winthrop, 1637-38. Narragansett Club, vol. VI., pp. 84-5. 

2 


14 THE "TOWNE STREETE.” 

Not until thus assured that their resources were 
ample and certain did the settlers make their first 
aggression upon the wilderness of the main land. It 
was two years after the first Englishmen came to 
Mooshassuc before their improvements began. 1 The 
earliest was a broad highway along the east side of 
the Great Salt River, lying at the foot of the hill, 
and following the curves of the shore. The land 
was there firm and easy of access. The ascent of 
the hill was, at that time, abrupt. Its surface was 
well drained, while the western shore was flat, 
marshy, and scarcely habitable, from want of fresh 
water. From the southern end of the settlement, by 
"Fox’s hill,” the road "lay by the waterside,” until 
it approached the falls of the Mooshassuc. There, 
leaving the shore, it ascended, in a long diagonal 
slope, by the side of a steep ravine to the hill-top .2 
Thence northward, at an elevation of some eighty 
feet above the stream, it went on to the utmost lim¬ 
its of the clearing. Its name, the "Towne streete,” 
was descriptive of its original character and import- 


1. After the proprietors had obtained a deed from Williams, Oct., 1638. 

2. Now known as Constitution Hill. 


THE "TOWNE STREETS.” 15 

ance. It did not lose its appropriateness daring an 
hundred and thirty years. This mode of designat¬ 
ing the sole or chief highway of a village was not 
uncommon in England, and was one of the earliest 
English traditions accepted by the town. 1 

In 1708, when it was, as the town records say, 
" rectified ,” it was called, being still the only one, 
"our ancient streets .” During the first two years 
the settlers were not, it is probable, more fortunate 
than those of Boston, some of whom at first "lay in 
tents ” and "small huts.” 2 

It is not probable that the companions of Williams 
attempted any permanent structures before they had 
acquired a title to the soil. 3 So soon as they could 
dispense with the shelter of the Indian wigwams, 
"those filthy, smoaky holes,” as Williams calls them, 
it seems that the New England settlers everywhere 

1. Mass. Historical Collections, fifth series, vol. V. Diary of Samuel Sew- 
all, p. 59. The principal street of Boston was, during many years, (A. D. 1676,) 
called the “ Towne Streete.” 

2. Prince’s Annals, p. 19. Savage’s Winthrop, vol. I., p. 44, “the poorer 
sort of people who lay in tents,” etc., p. 267. There were very few log huts in 
Boston in 1638, its eighth year. 

3. Oct., 1638, is the date of the “ Initial Deed,” the foundation of the Pro- 
prietary Title. 


16 


THE "TOWNE STREETE.” 


lived for a time in log houses rudely daubed with 
clay. 1 They were not long content with such habi¬ 
tations, and soon dwelt in houses set upon stone 
foundations and roughly but solidly framed with oak 
timbers hewn with the axe. There was little need of 
economy in material. It was growing everywhere 
around them, and might be had for the cutting. 

A straggling village of some two score houses was 
before long set up on the eastern side of the " Towne 
Streete,” along a tract of two miles. The owners 
were their own architects and builders. They had 
but few mechanics, and from the first gave each 
other mutual aid in any work which the times 
required. They were more fortunate than Plymouth 
had been, for, in 1638, "all manner of good English 
tools” could be bought in Boston by those who had 
the money to pay for them. In 1642 2 the English 
in Providence had all the usual tools, boards, nails, 
carpentry, doors and chests. As Williams does not 
mention glass, probably they were for a time forced 
to be content with oiled paper in its stead. Rough 

1. See Johnson’s Wonderworking Providences, p. 77. Nails, glass, and iron 
work could be bought in Boston at the time of the building of Providence. 

2. Williams’s Key, pp. 51, 91, 130. Providence, 1827. 


THE HOME-LOTS. 


17 


and unhewn stones, of which there was no lack in 
the hill-side, furnished materials for foundations and 
for the first huge chimneys. It was long before 
bricks were imported or manufactured in the neigh¬ 
bourhood. 

Each dwelling stood in its narrow "home-lot.” 
These allotments were intended to be of at least five 
acres. 1 They must have differed greatly in conven¬ 
ience and value, according to the nature of the soil 
and the varying slope of the hill. They would seem 
to have varied considerably in their dimensions and 
the width of their front upon the "Towne streete.” 2 
There was little accuracy in the work of the primi¬ 
tive surveyors, but they seldom erred in the scanti¬ 
ness of their measures. Probably Williams and his 
earliest associates were allowed the first choice. 
Their lots were in the middle of the row and in the 
neighbourhood of the spring. 

The early allotment of the homesteads has become 

1. All the allotments of “ home-shares ” were of this size. See ex. gr., 25 
Sept., 1661. Andrew Harris received a five acre lot. 

2. Some had a front of an hundred and twenty-five feet, and some of con¬ 
siderably less. It is not improbable that the more conspicuous settlers secured 
larger “home-lots” than the more obscure. 


18 


THE "HOME-LOTS.” 


involved in obscurity through the loss of the early 
documents of the town. We know not how soon 
the distribution was made, or the mode of proceed¬ 
ing. It appears that the committee which formed 
the original list of lots, and probably the Towne 
Street, on which they lay, consisted of Chad Brown, 
John Throckmorton, and Gregory Dexter. How 
they distributed the home-lots ; by lot or otherwise ; 
how long they were engaged in the work; whether 
anything was paid for the privilege of a choice ; all 
such details are now unknown. Such, in their hum¬ 
ble beginnings, were the "Plantations” of Provi¬ 
dence. 1 

The proprietors who judged that their allotments 
had fallen short of the true measure, were persistent 
in their applications, until the defect had been sup¬ 
plied. Of any surrenders of what some had received 
in excess of the five acres, no records have been 

1. Occasional entries in the Town Meeting Records give a feeble light as to 
the earliest proceeding of the settlers. May 28, 1661, “ Forasmuch as there is 
an order contained in our Towne Book, that each man’s home share of land, 
which wantethof five acres, it shall be made up, and there wanteth a consider¬ 
able quantity to make up Thomas Olney, Jr., his house lot or home-share, to be 
five acres,”— “ upon the 24th of this instant April, in the present year 1671, laid 
out unto Thomas Olney, Jr., a small quantity of land,” etc. 


THE "HOME-LOTS. 


19 


preserved. T. Olney, Sen., and T. Olney, Jr., 
were both proprietors. The measure of the first was 
in excess, and of the second in defect of the right 
acreage. 

When Thomas Olney, Jr., the life-long town 
clerk, came in his turn to devise his patrimonial 
estate, 1 he described his father’s five acre home-lot as 
containing " six and a half or seven acres.” The 
successors of the first townsmen were prompt in 
redressing grievances of this sort. Feb. 24, 1661, 
" Ordered that all home-shares of land which are not 
full five acres shall be made up full five acres with 
land in the neck, or in some other place convenient. 
This grant is with this condition that those who take 
it up damnify not any highway, nor any other man’s 
lands already laid out.” 

Among the "orders” of the second year of the 
plantations 2 is the following: "M’d the several por¬ 
tions of grass and meadow which our neighbour 
Greene, our neighbour Cole, our neighbour Arnold, 
and Mr. Weston, laid out in the Town’s name, unto 


1. He died June 11, 1722. 


2. 10th of 4th month. 


20 


THE ' HOME-LOTS. 


our neighbour James, neighbour Olney, neighbour 
Waterman, neighbour Cole, neighbour Weston, 
neighbour Carpenter, neighbour Holy man, were con¬ 
firmed as their proper right and inheritance, to 
them and theirs, as fully as the former portions, 
appropriated to our neighbour Throckmorton, neigh¬ 
bour Greene, neighbour Harris, Joshua Yerin, 
neighbour Arnold, neighbour Williams, were and 
are confirmed to them and theirs.” 

It would thus appear that the distribution of the 
home-lots was not postponed until the whole work 
was completed by the surveyors, but that the propri¬ 
etors received their shares, in batches, as the survey 
proceeded. 1 Williams and his neighbours were in 
the first allotment. The friendly terms employed in 
this distribution became strangely inapplicable as 
time went on. The narrow home-lots of the first 
proprietors have furnished boundaries for magnificent 
estates, even to our day. Each of them extended 
eastward from the "Towne Streete,” to a road which 


1. Probably the neighbourhood of the spring saw the first work of civilized 
man in the valley of the Mooshassuc. 


THE "HOME-LOTS. 5> 21 

divided " Providence neck ” into halves, and which 
was a part of the original plan of the settlement. 1 

This road had no distinctive name. In the deeds 
and public records of an hundred and fifty years, it 
was called "the Highway,” or the "highway at the 
head of the lots,” thus indicating a distant and little- 
frequented region. After the " Upper ferry,” where 
is now " Red Bridge,” was established in 1678, the 
"Highway” was popularly known for a century or 
more, as "Ferry lane.” It has no name upon Daniel 
Anthony’s map of 1803. In 1806, it received from 
the town council the title of " Hope street.” 2 

1. Until the “ Plantations ” were divided into several towns, the tract be¬ 
tween the Mooshassuc and the Seekonk was called in deeds and records 
“ Providence Neck,” or “ the Neck.” See Eecords of Deeds, Feb. 19, 1682. In 
deeds of the 17th and the early part of the last century, may be read descrip¬ 
tions of lands at “ Tockwotton in Providence Neck.” Vol. III., Probate 
Eecords, pp. 12, 13. Sept. 1726, the will of Benjamin Tillinghast makes men¬ 
tion of land at “Fox Hill in the south part of Providence Neck.” The term 
is now much more restricted in its application. 

2. The earliest highways were intended to be at least seventy feet wide, 
according to the inaccurate measurements of the proprietors’ surveyors. This 
rule was only re-affirmed by the Town Meeting of 28th 5th mo., 1651, which 
“ ordered, that every common highway shall be left four pole.” This was a 
mere resolution, not binding future meetings of the townsmen. It was disre¬ 
garded whenever the difficulties of the route, or the wants of the neighbour¬ 
hood required only a narrower way. Town meeting, Jan. 1, 1663. A highway 
two poles wide from the Towne streete down to the river, was ordered to be 


22 


THE HIGHWAYS. 


These two original thoroughfares—the "Town 
Street” and the "Highway” were for a long period 
connected by only three narrow lanes,—Power’s 
lane—a lane long nameless, but popularly called in 
the last century, Jail lane and King street, now 
Meeting street,— and the lane at the North end, 
called during the first years of the Town, " Dexter’s ” 
and then "Olney’s” lane. These were in the places 
where, in the primitive wilderness, the ascent had 
been easiest or where there had been an ancient 
gorge, or ravine. Those who remember Meeting 
street before its modern grade and improvement, will 
agree that this must have beeu the reason for its 
position. In assigning the home-lots there was no 
provision for the highways of the future, nor any 

laid between Thomas Arnold’s house and Stephen Northup’s house, at the 
North end. Thus, 23d December, 1663, the highway to and over Dexter’s 
bridge at the North end, was ordered to be two poles wide. On the 2d of Jan., 
1681, a highway three poles wide is established from the Town street to the 
waterside, “ that the Towne may, if they see cause, set up a wharfe at ye ende 
of it,”—“at ye most convenient place yt may be.” It is now Market Square. 
The highway to the Upper Ferry was “ stated ” at three poles width, 26 May, 
1739. The liberal allowance of those days was “ eighteen foot pole.” 

See Williams’s deed 29 Jan., 1667, of the Whatclieer estate to James Ellis. 
Knowles’s Life, p. 122. Town Meeting Record, 27 October, 1682, p. 67. The 
proprietors in all their grants sold by the “ 18 foot pole.” 


THE HIGHWAYS. 


23 


anticipation of wants beyond those of a community 
of small farmers. This irregular parallelogram, 
lying between the Town street and the Highway, 
and between the Bay, (sometimes in the earliest 
deeds,) called "the Sea,” on the south, and Dexter’s, 
afterwards Olney’s, lane on the north, constituted the 
entire plan, sketched by the original settlers. 

Having thus appropriated their domain in the wil¬ 
derness, they proceeded to set up their homesteads. 
Here and there, two or three houses were in near 
neighbourhood, separated by a long interval from the 
next group. In the absence of drawings or descrip¬ 
tions, we learn something of the appearance of the 
primitive village, from the public records, especially 
from those of the Courts of Probate. The changes 
in the style and costliness of dwellings, are there 
briefly noted by contemporary observers, as the agri¬ 
cultural town grew prosperous, and then passed 
away and the commercial period came in. The pro¬ 
bate inventories of several generations, enumerate 
with curious minuteness, all articles of personal 
property according to the rooms in which they were 
kept or found. We thus learn the size of every 


24 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


house, the number of its apartments, and the com¬ 
forts of the establishment. The houses upon the 
" Towne Streete ” during the first generation were of 
a story or a story and a half in height, with a huge 
stone chimney at one end. In the earliest days (if 
the town its houses had but two rooms, called in the 
Probate documents, the " lower room ” and the 
"chamber.” The space did not always permit the 
luxury of stairs, and the only ascent to the chamber 
was often by a ladder. These humble dwellings 
were nearly universal until the last decade of the 
seventeenth century—the poverty which followed 
the Indian war delaying the period of improvement. 
In such a house lived John Smith the miller and 
Town Clerk. 1 The house of John Whipple, one of 
the chief landholders of his day, stood near the foot 
of Constitution hill. It was one of the first which 
was rebuilt after Philip’s war. It appears by the 
proceedings upon his will (which bears date 8th May, 
1682) that his house had only a lower room and a 
chamber above. This was also the primitive farm 
house of the Plymouth colony. A few houses had 


1. He died 1682. 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


25 


two rooms upon the floor, sometimes called in the 
inventories, the "inner” and the "outer” rooms. 
Thomas Olney, Senr., 1 had a "parlour,” "kitchen” 
and " chamber.” He had also a larger personal 
estate than most of his neighbours. Many such 
houses, but of date later than the Indian war, were 
but recently standing on the road between Providence 
and Bristol, several yet remain in Providence. 2 
Houses of this class continued to be erected by per¬ 
sons of humble fortunes, long after the more wealthy 
had larger and more convenient abodes, although 
Williams very briefly relates that Miantonomo "kept 
his barbarous court ” at his house, 3 this would not 
imply that the house was a very large one. The 
visit was paid in warm weather, (May, 1637). 
Probably only the sachem slept within doors. It 
did no discredit to Mrs. Williams’s hospitality and 

1. Died 1682. Vol. I., Probate Records, p. 33. 

2. 1879. One is in Waterman street, a building much older than the street 
itself. It was probably brought there from the Town street. One, in more 
complete preservation, stands upon the west side of North Main street, a few 
doors north of Constitution hill. The heavy, projecting eaves and solid car¬ 
pentry of these lowly old buildings are like those of the seventeenth century, 
of which they are the successors. 

3. Williams to Winthrop, May, 1637, Narr. Club, vol. VI.., pp. 17—23. 

3 


26 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


to her regard to cleanliness in housekeeping, if the 
retinue of fifty inferior Indians were compelled to 
encamp in the open air. Williams, however, had at 
times, more money than his associates, and his house 
was, very probably, the largest of his day. 

As the agricultural period of the town drew 
towards its close, the increasing comfort of the 
people showed itself in the enlargement of their 
houses. These grew in length, before they gained 
in height. Late in the seventeenth century, the 
Probate inventories enumerate effects found in the 
North and South, or the East and West rooms and 
chambers. There were then four apartments and the 
chimney was in the middle of the house. These 
dwellings became frequent at the beginning of the 
last century. There were then, also, a few nar¬ 
row houses, of two entire stories, with a garret 
above, having two rooms on each floor, with a lean-to 
and a steep roof. The old " Gaol house,” on Con¬ 
stitution hill is of this fashion. So also was the 
house of Nathaniel Brown which stood at the corner 
of Church street. 1 He was the earliest shipbuilder 


1. It was removed in the summer of 1842. 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


27 


in the town, a man of wealth for his day, and one of 
the founders of St. John’s Church. His house was 
of two stories, with a huge chimney at the north 
end. These were the precursors of yet wider houses, 
in the early commercial days of the town, with four 
rooms on each floor, and two chambers in the roof 
above. But until the early decades of the last cen¬ 
tury, the greater number of the houses in the Town 
street were of but one story in height. Their occu¬ 
pants doubtless looked with wonder and disapproval 
upon the extravagance of their two storied neigh¬ 
bours. 

The whole of the primitive village has passed 
away. The antiquarian researches of sixty years ago 
failed to identify a single house as a survivor of 
Philip's war. But the town was rebuilt with houses 
of the same style and dimensions. Enough of these 
remained to enable the octogenarians of a few years 
past to form a distinct conception of the Town street 
of Williams and Harris. It is certain that no struc¬ 
ture of their day, could rival the house of Governor 
Coddington, of Newport. This was built in 1650, 
and with its massive timbers, projecting upper story, 


28 


THE HOUSEHOLDS. 


and huge chimneys remained until 1835, as a memo¬ 
rial of the superior wealth of the settlers of Acquet- 
neck. 

When the first householders of the Town street 
had thus completed their habitations, their furniture, 
like their dwellings, was fashioned by their own 
bauds. Though not bred as mechanics, they had 
sufficient dexterity to form rude planks and timbers, 
and the equally rude and solid chests and tables 
which stood upon the sanded floors. 1 Chairs were 
but an infrequent luxury. The families which pos¬ 
sessed them had commonly but one or two, which 
were probably reserved for the elders of the house¬ 
hold. John Smith (miller and town clerk) a man 
of chief note in his day, had four, John Whipple, 
(died May, 1685), was an innkeeper, yet his inven¬ 
tory mentions but " three chaires.” 2 As a substitute 
the old English settle stood at the family table, by 
the winter fireside, and before the door during the 
summer evenings. The settlers were at first, not 
richer in culinary utensils. The ancient iron pot 

1. Williams’s Key, pp. 51, 52, Providence, 1827. 

2. He had also “ an old, decayed warming pan.” 


THE HOUSEHOLDS. 


29 


was their sole representative, and doubtless per¬ 
formed many functions. Like the English yeomen 
of the period, their tables had no display of linen. 
The ancient wooden trencher, with a few articles of 
earthenware or " puter,” served all the purposes of 
refreshment or hospitality. During many years we 
find no indications of prosperity, but only of the 
most ordinal comfort. The earliest Probate inven¬ 
tories drawn up with the curious minuteness of that 
time give scanty proofs of the enjoyment of any 
household luxuries. Not one of them has any men¬ 
tion of the silver plate or carved oak furniture such 
as many of the planters of Massachusetts brought 
with them. All the available means of Providence 
were required for the purchase of arms, tools and 
cattle. 

With the revival of the town after Philip’s war, 
there came the first gleams of prosperity. Their 
Indian enemies had disappeared, and for the first 
time, the prospect became hopeful. There was now 
an enjoyment of creature comforts which had been 
before unknown. Kitchen utensils increased in 
number and variety, with other household wealth. 


30 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


By 1680, frying pans, gridirons, spits and skillets, 
in the houses of the more prosperous few, gave forth 
savoury odours of which the previous generation had 
little experience. Even these seem to have been 
regarded with disapproval by some of the frugal 
housewives, who remembered the earlier days of the 
town. 

Stephen Dexter died in 1678, and his widow, 
Abigail Dexter, was appointed his administratrix 5th 
January, 1679. In her inventory of his effects, she 
expresses her sense of the degeneracy of the times, 
or a lofty contempt of the vanity of the world by an 
entry of "a frying pan,” "a skillett, and other 
trumpery,” valued at 10 shillings. As the flocks in¬ 
creased, there came due attention to household man¬ 
ufactures. Many a family had its spinning-wheel, 
and one or two pairs of cards, and comforted the 
long winters with "house-made blankets ” and other 
fabrics of wool. There were also spinning-wheels 
for flax, but none as yet for cotton. William 
Harris, one of the chief proprietors, and the most 
active citizen of his day, speedily restored his for¬ 
tunes after the Indian war; at his death, in 1681, he 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


31 


left the most ample establishment in the Plantations. 
His house had but a story and a half in height but 
his barns and cribs were many and well stored. His 
voluminous inventory shows every kind of rural 
comfort. Besides two chairs, a frying pan, platters, 
dishes and spoons, and a press for " syder,” he alone 
of that generation, had a warming-pan for the com¬ 
fort of his old age. Yet there was nothing which at 
that day would have been accounted a luxury,—no cup 
or spoon of silver, but only "puter” drinking vessels 
and plates- There were in the early days of the 
Plantations, but scanty means of family or social 
enjoyment when the day’s work was done. If the 
settlers had brought books, hard labour left few 
opportunities for reading them. Dicussions of every 
sort—contemporary politics, revolutions, theology— 
" fixed fate, foreknowledge absolute,” went on while 
the flame of huge oak logs went roaring up the chim¬ 
ney. The disputants were not rich in cattle, or 
there would have been no lack of tallow candles— 
a common household manufacture in later days. 
Like the farmers of Massachusetts, the men of the 
"Towne Streete ” had the light of pine knots for 


32 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


their sole guide in evening work or study. So de¬ 
pendent were they upon their forests, even forty 
years after their settlement, that the Townsmen pro¬ 
hibited the conversion of pine trees into naval stores. 
It was a mistaken economy which prohibited or 
delayed navigation in the supposed interest of 
farmers. Four years after Philip’s war, (December 
14, 1681,) the Town meeting adopted an earnest 
resolution, an extract from which must suffice : 
" Considering that the Town hath long experienced 
the great benefit they have had by their pitchwood 
for candlelight,”—" and whereas there is a bruit 
abroad that some are determined to propagate the 
running of tar from pitchwood,”—"the Town pro¬ 
hibits making tar or coal from pitchwood,” "except 
that each landholder is permitted to make ten gallons 
for his own use, and on his own land.” 1 


1. We may remember that the use of pine wood for lights was lamented 
among the Southern people, as one of the hardships of the rebellion. The 
same hardship was long borne without complaint by the people of New 
England. 

See Upham’s Hist, of Witchcraft, vol. I., p. 444. “ Sticks of candlewood ” 

were in common use in Newburyport in 1680. Mr. Newman, of Rehoboth is 
said to have compiled his bulky concordance by the light of pine knots. 



THE HOMESTEADS. 


33 


So persistent were they in their original pursuits, 
that forty years after their settlement, the people 
around oue of the best harbours in North America, 
had not learned the appropriate use of their naval 
stores. 

It was long before the increasing wealth of the 
Plantations enabled them to add to the scanty com¬ 
forts of their earlier years. The humble character 
of their improvements was all that could be expected, 
when science had not furnished even to the wealthiest 
cities, any knowledge of the means of preserving 
health. In one particular, the Townsmen showed 
(as became a company of exiles), a kindly care for 
wayfarers, while perhaps, they were not without 
some forethought as to their own security. The 
wells of the old town were not within the enclosures, 
but were dug in the Town street, in front of the 
houses, and were free to all. There was, at first, 
but one for ever}' group of buildings. Later, there 
was a long row, one before every second or third 
house. During the first century of the town the 
wells were dug in the street as a thing of course. 
The Town street was too wide for the traffic of that 


34 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


time, and no complaint was made of the narrowing 
of the highway. With the increase of the Town, 
towards the middle of the last century, the permis¬ 
sion of the Town Meeting was required. Later still, 
the same assent was requested, whenever a pump 
was to be set up, in the place of an ancient well 
curb. 1 

With a like kindly care for posterity, the ancient 
proprietors withheld from sale the spring at which 
they had first refreshed themselves in the wilderness. 
It was first called " Scot’s spring,” after Richard Scot, 
a conspicuous settler in the neighborhood—after¬ 
wards " Roger Williams’s spring,” in memory of his 
landing place, but it was never the property of 
either. The "spring lot” was retained by the Pro¬ 
prietors of the Plantations until 1721, (3d July,) 

1. See, for example, Town Meeting Records, 29 August, 1749. These ancient 
wells are now filled up, or hidden by the pavement. In the later years of the 
last century they were fitted with pumps. Two or three of these yet remain 
at the North end, as memorials of the benevolence of other days. Within the 
memory of the late Gov. Allen there was a row of them, along “ Cheapside.” 
A specimen of these wells, with its narrow curb of antique pattern, stood but 
a few years ago, upon Congdon street, (near Angell street). This is not an 
old street, but it was opened while the town preserved its traditions, and many 
of its landholders followed ancient fashions, which were then passing away. 
See also Stone’s Life of Howland, p. 25. 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


35 


when it was sold by them to Gabriel Beruon, with 
an express reservation of the spring to the public 
use. Their deed proves that they were too well 
aware of its value to allow it to pass into private 
ownership, and affords also an instructive example 
of the worthlessness of many local traditions. The 
spring, as it appeared at the close of the last century 
is thus described by one who then lived near it: 
" The spring gushed forth from the hill-side in a copi¬ 
ous stream, issuing from a shallow pool, and from 
boiling quicksands, and flowed down to the adjacent 
river. At a later day it was surrounded by a circu¬ 
lar wall of rough stones. It was at the foot of the 
steep bank on which Gabriel Bernon’s house was 
built (1721). Now covered with earth, high above 
the original level, it is hidden from sight, and all its 
associations with the early settlers, utterly de¬ 
stroyed.” 1 

While many things have utterly perished, which 
would have illustrated the social life of the first 
townsmen, the records preserve to us, at least the 
knowledge of their places of abode. Some of the 


1. Z. Allen. 


36 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


earliest were at the South end, not far from "Mile 
end cove.” But in the days of the old farming town, 
that end of the Town street was not the favorite one, 
and the houses were widely separated from each 
other. The centre of the town was by the falls of 
the Mooshassuc, and there, the stream was deep 
enough for the wants of a much later day. The 
most remote dwellings at the South end, were those 
of Tillinghast, Wickenden and Power. The last 
gave his name to one of the primitive highways, 
coeval with the Town street (Power’s lane). Only 
at a comparatively recent period, Wickenden was 
commemorated in a like manner by the successors to 
his estate . 1 

Opposite to the present Crawford street, were, 
during several generations, the home-lots of the 
Fields. They were among the early planters, and 
for long among the chief landholders of the town. 
" Field’s Point ” is a memorial of one of the first 
members of the family. The northernmost of their 

1. Wickenden street was an old thoroughfare and bore divers popular 
names. (See Street Records, vol. VII.) In 1792 it was called “ Ferry lane, or 
Wickenden street” in public documents. It received its legal name in 1805. 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


37 


estates upon the Town street was the site of the 
"Garrison house” during Philip’s war. It was one 
of the largest houses of that time, and when the 
town gave leave to the citizens to " fortify ” them¬ 
selves, this, with other of the strongest buildings, 
was " fortified ” with iron gratings at the windows. 
This, with the other places of security, which the 
Indians did not venture to attack, saved that part of 
the town from the conflagration of March, 1676. 1 

With its site now partly covered with what, in the 
days of colonial loyalty was known as Hanover 
street, and now, as College street, was the homestead 
of Chad Brown. Where is now Thomas street, was 
the original site of the Angells. They added to 
their original home-lot the square immediately to the 
south of it, part of which, until 1774, was an orchard. 
The next home-lot on the north of it, by the side of 
the ancient alley, was the dwelling place of Thomas 
Olney, the successor of Williams, after the disrup¬ 
tion of the religious society which he had founded. 

1. The “ Garrison house ” remained until 1772. It stood about forty or fifty 
feet from the Town street. The last of the original owners of the site sold it 
in that year, (Feb., 1772,) to Joseph Brown, who, in the year 1774 built there 
the house now owned by the Providence Bank. 

4 


38 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


This old byway upon the Olney estate was ordered 
by the second Thomas Olney, the Town Clerk, to be 
forever kept open, in order that his descendants 
might have perpetual access to the family burial place. 
His purpose has been signally disappointed. The 
alley has long savoured of anything but reverence 
for ancestors. It does not appear that any dwelling 
ever stood upon the site of the Quaker Meeting 
house, or of the Court House parade. Not far above 
at the foot of the present Howland street, in neigh¬ 
borhood too near for friendship, was Roger Williams, 
with John Throckmorton next him on the south, and 
Joshua Verin on the north. Verin’s lot was by and 
upon the site of the present Church street. Here 
occurred the famous scene of his "restraining the 
liberty of conscience” of Mrs. Verin, described with 
grim humour by Winthrop. It adds much to the 
picturesqueuess of Winthrop’s narrative, to learn 
that Williams and Verin were in immediate neigh- 
bourhood, and that Mrs. Verin was sorely tempted 
to neglect the family dinner in order that she might 
attend the prophesyings of Williams in the next 
house. Verin had some excuse for his vexation if 


RICHARD SCOT. 


39 


he came home from his work at noon, and found his 
meat overdone, or neglected under circumstances 
like these . 1 

A few paces farther to the north, upon the lot next 
to St. John’s churchyard, lived Richard Scot, the 
first convert here, of George Fox, and the persistent 
enemy of Williams. It is singular that the bitterest 
foes of Williams, and who gave him annoyance equal 
to any which he had experienced from the elders of 
"the Bay,” were those in closest contact with him, 
and who should have lived in the closest interchange 
of neighbourly good offices. The letters of Throck¬ 
morton preserved by Williams , 2 and of Scot, by 
Fox , 3 do no discredit to their powers of invective. 
At his post of observation, some two hundred feet 
distant, (across what is now the churchyard, and 
upon which no dwelling ever stood,) Scot devoted 
many years to the study of the less attractive traits 
of Williams’s character, which he preserved in his 

1. Our last intelligence from Verin, is from the island of Barbadoes, whence, 
(Sept. 28, 16G3), he sent a letter of attorney to William Harris, to sell his 
Providence estate. He must have found ample scope for freedom of conscience 
among the old free-traders of the Bahama channel. 

2. George Fox Digged Out, pp. 8, 14, 23. 

3. New England’s Firebrand Quenched. Appendix. 


40 


MARY DYRE. 


caustic letter to George Fox. With such neighbours 
on either hand, we need not wonder that Williams 
sometimes indulged in an acrimony of expression 
which had an enlivening effect upon the dullness of 
the Town street. Richard Scot was not the only 
character of note, who dwelt upon the site. There 
lived William and Mary Dyre, even more fervent 
enthusiasts for their belief. From that spot she went 
forth, to be hanged for Quakerism on Boston Com¬ 
mon. 1 Beyond Scot, along nearly the whole east 
side of the present "Constitution Hill,” there was 
scarcely a house. The steep hill-side behind it did 
not invite purchasers. In 1659, came John Whip¬ 
ple, from Massachusetts. He purchased nearly the 
whole tract eastward of that part of the Town street. 2 

Iu the earlier days of the town that slope of the 
Town street stood empty. At the beginning of the 
last century, and forty years later, the "old goal 

1. Mary Dyre’s son held office in Rhode Island at the time of her execution. 
Savage’s Winthrop, vol. I., p. 26. 

2. Vol. I. Deeds and Transcripts, A. d., 1659. July 27, Quarter Day: “This 
day John Whipple, Senr., is received into the Town, a purchaser, to have a 
purchase right of lands.” p. 105. His posterity were, during several genera¬ 
tions, among the chief landholders of the Plantations. 


ANCIENT SITES. 


41 


house,” still standing at the top of the hill, did not 
add to the attractiveness of the locality. Beyond it, 
and where the ground once more becomes level, the 
settlers again appear in near neighbourhood. Near 
Dexter’s (or Olney’s) lane, lived Gregory Dexter, 
who contributed his full share to the controversies 
in which the town was singularly rich. A little 
farther on was Shadrach Man ton, who, as Town 
Clerk, has preserved much of our early history. 
The North End was, during many years, the most 
closely settled part of the town. In the field directly 
east of the North Burying Ground, there was, within 
the memory of some recently living, 1 a row of five 
old cellars, with foundations of stone. The houses 
which stood upon them were burned in Philip’s war, 
and were never rebuilt. When the town revived 
after its catastrophe, it commenced its movement 
towards the south. Only in recent years, has there 
been a new growth or development in a northerly 
direction. In the valley of the Mooshassuc, at the 
foot of the hill, there was no increase until the com- 


1. Gov. Philip Allen and Mr. Dexter Thurber. 


42 


PAWTUXET. 


mercial period of the town. 1 The labour of seventy 
years did no more than to occupy and build up the 
ancient home-lots on the east side of the Town street. 

All the best lots in " Providence Neck ” were ap¬ 
propriated by the first settlers. That its valuable 
fields were not many, is evident from the number, 
even of the earliest comers, who passed on into the 
wilderness, and sat down by the water streams. 
Within four years after the settlement of Providence, 
the natural meadows on both sides of the Pawtuxet 
drew away some of the chief inhabitants. Among 
them were some of the family of Roger Williams, 2 
and to his comfort, probably, his future enemy, 
William Harris. 

The Rhodeses, Arnolds, Carpenters and others, 
began a new plantation, which, during eighty years, 
paid taxes nearly equal to those of Providence. 
Pawtuxet and Newport were of contemporaneous 
origin but of very diverse fortunes. The Blackstone 

1. The Proprietors sold no lots northward of the site of Mill bridge, until 
1718. Staples’s Annals of Providence, p. 37, nor was the street extended in 
that direction. 

2. Zach. Rhodes was son-in-law of Williams. 


THE FIRST ALLOTMENT. 


43 


valley gained also a few settlers. These and the 
dwellers by the Pawtuxet became the men of the 
" North woods ” and of the " South woods,” in the 
next generation. Warwick, (granted by Mianto- 
nomo, in 1642-3,) was of especial service to Provi¬ 
dence, in drawing away Gorton and some of his 
more unruly disciples. In their new homes, there 
was ample space for large meadows and pastures. 
The original allotment of Providence did not aid its 
prosperity, even as an agricultural town. Its pur¬ 
pose was, to give every one a front upon the street 
and river and an equal share of the farm lands. This 
attempt at democratic equality only created a multi¬ 
tude of small estates, widely separated, and in some 
instances, nearly or quite a mile apart. Besides his 
"home-lot” of five acres, each proprietor had a "six 
acre lot,” at a distance from his abode, and in a few 
years, one or more "stated common lots,” which he 
acquired by purchase from the Proprietary, or by 
their occasional land dividends among themselves. 
The waste of time, and insecurity of property from 
Indian thefts, when not within the immediate view 
of its owners, were constant sources of loss and 


44 


THE HOMESTEADS. 


vexation to the holders of these minute estates. 
Their exchange and surrender, so as to create larger 
and more manageable freeholds, afforded a great part 
of its occupation to the Town Meetings of two gen¬ 
erations, and were a check to agricultural improve¬ 
ments. The wearisome hours of the " Town’s 
Quarter Day,” were in great part due to the unskill¬ 
ful plan of the first townsmen. 

Each ” home-lot ” was the dwelling-place of its 
owner. On the Town street, was commonly a nar¬ 
row strip of greensward before the house, which 
has been described. As soon as the townsmen had 
cattle, the barns were set up for better protection, 
at a short distance eastward from the dwellings. The 
most valuable property was thus gathered into near 
neighborhood, and the destruction in Philip’s war 
involved almost the utter ruin of the owner. The 
eastern slope of the hill, towards the "Highway,” 
with its brooks and well-watered fields, was the pas¬ 
ture land. It seems to have been an ample provision 
for all the cattle which, in that generation, were 
owned in " Providence Neck.” 

Every home-lot had its orchard, about half way 


THE HOUSEHOLD GRAVES. 


45 


up the western hill-side. There, but a few paces 
from their homestead, were the graves of the house¬ 
hold. The family allotment soon became " alike 
their birth and burial place,”—created, or strength¬ 
ened local attachments and arrested tendencies to 
farther migration. In the near neighbourhood of the 
present Benefit street, were in long succession, the 
resting places of the founders and of their children. 
There, from one end of the village to the other, lay 
the earlier generations of Dexters, Williamses, 
Olneys, Watermans, Angells, Browns, Crawfords, 
Powers, Tillinghasts, the patriarchs of the town. 
When the controversies of the Town street were 
ended, the disputants were laid to rest by their 
surviving opponents, in the quiet of their homes in 
the wilderness. We have no record of their homely 
ceremonial. With the views and feelings of many 
among them, they probably desired that there should 
be none. The father of Governor Sessions, pre¬ 
served among his boyish recollections, that of the 
funeral of Roger Williams. He was buried, as be¬ 
came a Governor, with such military honors as the 
Plantations could afford, and his fellow soldiers of 


46 


THE NORTH BURIAL GROUND. 


the Indian war fired a volley over his grave. 
Whether through poverty or want of skill, or the 
early diffusion of Quaker ideas, no inscriptions 
were set over the earlier graves. This primitive cus¬ 
tom of sepulture outlasted three generations. When 
the maritime period of the town came in, it was evi¬ 
dent that social changes were.coming with it. New 
purchasers were seeking for abodes, and old home¬ 
steads were divided. The forecast of Thomas Olney 
and of a few others, at the end of the seventeenth 
century, had induced the Proprietors to set apart the 
most desolate sand-hill in the Plantation for the burial 
of the dead. 1 During the next forty years, few 
availed themselves of the permission. There was 
no anticipation of modern sanitary ideas, and the 
funeral march was along and dreary one, for, until 
a comparatively recent date, the corpse was carried 
forth upon the shoulders of the neighbours. The 
household graves remained until the destruction of 
the home-lots by the opening of Benefit street. The 
chief obstacle to this certain and needful expansion 
of the town, was the determined hostility of the 


1. Town Meeting, June, 1700. 


THE NORTH BURIAL GROUND. 


47 


children of the founders. Whoever wonders at the 
curves in the modern Benefit street, (before the 
street was widened more conspicuous than at present,) 
may be surprised to learn that they originated in the 
order given by the Town to the committee who laid 
out the street, to avoid disturbing the graves of the 
early settlers. This sentiment is well nigh extinct 
among us. In 1750, deference to ancestral feeling 
delayed and well nigh defeated the chief improvement 
which had been projected by the Town. But as 
years went by, a new generation of Proprietors 
deemed ancient orchards and household cemeteries 
more valuable to the living than to the dead, and 
they were accordingly converted into lots upon the 
new street. Such remains as could be collected, 
were transferred to the North Burial ground. One 
by one the household cemeteries disappeared. 1 Two 
only now remain, those of Waterman and Tilling- 

1. The General Assembly authorized the transfer of the bodies from the 
Olney burial ground in October, 1785. The Town Council concurred 3d April, 
1786. The burial ground of Chad Brown, in College street, was purchased by 
the town in 1795, from his descendants. That of the Crawford family, at the 
corner of Benefit and Benevolent streets, was destroyed in 1801. Its site is 
now in great part, covered by the highway. 


48 


THE TOWN MILL. 


hast, the last memorials of this primitive custom of 
the town. 

The narrow means of the first settlers added much 
to the severity of their labours. When they had 
harvested the crops from acres neither broad nor 
fertile, they could enjoy the fruit of their toils only 
by the wearisome use of the Indian mortar. Ten 
years went by, before they were able to set up the 
mill which is everywhere one of the first undertak¬ 
ings of a community of civilized men. It was fortu¬ 
nate for Williams that one of his earliest companions 
was a millwright. So soon as they were able, the 
townsmen availed themselves of his services. In 
1646, (1st of 1st mo.,) they made a grant of land 
to John Smith, in the valley where the falls of the 
Mooshassuc invited the erection of the Town Mill. 
The memory of his obsolete machinery, (for break¬ 
ing up grain by an operation similar to that of a pile 
driver,) has been preserved in the name of "Stam¬ 
pers street.” Long before jail or meeting-house, 
the Town mill was the earliest institution of the 
Plantations. It received much careful oversight 
from the Town meeting. The miller was to build 


THE TOWN MILL. 


49 


and repair it at his own cost, and the town promised 
to erect or to permit no other. " Town meeting, 
3d, 9mo., 1649, agreed that eveiy second and fifth 
day of the week shall be for grinding of the corn of 
the town.” The other days were the miller's own. 
"The sixteenth part of every bushel (with allowance 
for waste according to the custom of the country) is 
to be allowed for grinding.” 1 The mill fixed the 
centre of the town at the North end, and long kept 
it there. Around and near it, those who were able, 
set their houses, and it became not merely the nucleus 
of population, but the place of public rendezvous 
and exchange. It served the same purpose as the 
meeting-house in early Massachusetts, or as the 
newspaper and insurance offices of later days. The 
domestic parliament there in perpetual session, saw 
the first caucuses in town politics, canvassed repre¬ 
sentatives and measures, and took part in many a 
sturdy encounter of the Baptist, the Gortonian, and 
the Quaker. The population became densest in its 

1. Providence Gazette, a century later, Nov. 10, 1764. The toll at the Town 
Mill was set at one-sixteenth part of the rye, one-eighteenth part of the wheat, 
one-fourteenth part of the corn, conformable to an order of the Town’s com¬ 
mittee lately appointed for that purpose. 

5 


50 


THE TOWN MILL. 


neighbourhood. There, too, was sufficient depth of 
water for the earliest navigation by " cannowes and 
boates,” and there the country roads, long mere 
bridle-paths, converged. The easy slope of the hill 
at Dexter’s (now Olney’s) lane, afforded the best 
opening towards Rehoboth, and when Providence 
first had inns and fairs and shops, they were set up 
in the same vicinity. Near the fresh stream, also 
congregated the first who practised the most useful 
arts and trades. June 24, 1655, p. 123, Town 
Meeting Records, " It is ordered that Thomas Olnie, 
Junr., his houselot, be laid out by the Stampers, ac¬ 
cording to his bill, provided he follow tanning, and 
further provided that the Toune likewise doe maintaine 
a sufficient highway.” This was in his youthful days. 
In later years he was a chief officer and landholder 
of the town. Sixty years later, (October 27, 1705,) 
the water power which moved the Town Mill was 
not yet fully employed. The Proprietors then 
granted to John Smith, the son of the old miller, 
and to Richard Arnold, the land next south of the 
grist mill for a sawmill, which they were to build 
within three years. The inns and the "goal house” 


THE TOWN MILE. 


51 


were in the " Towne streete,” not far away, and the 
mill was thus the centre of the old agricultural town. 
The neighbourhood has long since lost all semblance 
of what it was in its early days. The present em¬ 
bankments of the Mooshassuc had no existence dur¬ 
ing a century and a half. The hill-side sloped 
abruptly to the water’s edge. During all this time, 
being the only accessible fresh stream, there was the 
common watering place. The murmurs of ancient 
inhabitants against the brawls and disturbances of 
boys and negroes, who, morning and evening, con¬ 
gregated near the mill, with their masters’ cattle, 
assure us that the early days of Providence had a 
delightful experience of patriarchal manners. 1 

During one hundred and eighty years the Town 
Mill fulfilled its office, and was one of the last 
memorials of primitive times. It was destroyed at 
last, by the Blackstone canal, through which some 


1. The annoyance had become so great that an act of assembly, 1681, was 
passed in order to give some check to the disturbances. By a communication in 
the Gazette , (March 30th, 1765), it appears that the nuisance was still unabated. 
The “ boys and negroes ” still disturbed the quiet of the Town street, by “ rid¬ 
ing in droves” to Mill River, every morning and evening, racing as they went, 
without hindrance from the constables of those days. 


52 


THE TOWN MILL. 


over-sanguine citizens, fondly hoped that the old 
locality would regain something of its primitive im¬ 
portance. They gained nothing but experience. 
The Town, now that its once favorite mill was 
silenced and deserted, endeavoured to repossess itself 
of the acres which it had granted to the old miller. 
His descendants maintained their possession with a 
sturdy perseverance worthy of their ancestor. Dur¬ 
ing ten years the contest claimed the attention of the 
courts . 1 The Town gained nothing but a better 
knowledge of the vagueness and inaccuracy of its 

1. The case of the Town Mill, Providence vs. Martha Howell , enables us 
to comprehend something of the bitterness and persistency of the controver¬ 
sies of the first two generations. They were—nearly all—results of an attempt 
to conduct public affairs without the aid of legal knowledge or experience. 
Something may be learned of the appearance of the neighbourhood of the Town 
Mill from the preamble of an act of the Assembly, passed March, 1762. The 
tide then flowed up to the falls of the Mooshassuc. The highway, which w’as 
but little above the level of the stream, was “ not passable at all in the winter 
season, unless the cattle be shod, by reason of the springs that rise out of the 
ground.” “ Twenty or thirty rods of said road is overflowed every spring tide, 
and is impassable for carts, or people on foot, during the tide being up, which 
is a great damage both to the said Town and the country, a great part of the 
wood being brought into town by that road.” The road is “so worn by 
the great quantity of water that falls from the hill, that it is not passable for 
more than one cart at a time.” The Legislature therefore give power to the 
Town of Providence, to raise £1,000, by lottery, to repair the “ highway lead¬ 
ing to the mills, and into Smithfield and Gloucester.” Schedule, p. 90, March, 
1762. 



FLOODS IN THE MOOSHASSUC. 


53 


own early grants and records. The estate, once the 
most valuable in the Plantations, ended by becoming 
an inheritance equally unprofitable to those who held 
or who sought its possession. 

It may be that the first settlers at the North end 
deemed the hill-top more defensible than the valley 
against Indian attack. It was, at least, secure from 
the freshets which sometimes poured down the 
Mooshassuc. Its winter floods once rolled from the 
densely wooded country, volumes of water, such as 
the last two generations have not seen. Very few 
purchasers set their houses by the margin of the 
river. Only some of the most adventurous built by 
the very brink of the stream, at the bottom of the 
steep and narrow valley. Tradition gave warning 
that the spot was full of danger. Recent years had 
given serious, but unheeded admonitions. 

At length, during the winter of 1784, 1 a torrent 
swept away the bridge by the Town Mill, and all the 

1. See Town Meeting Records, 20th Sept., 1784. The Town issued its prom¬ 
issory notes, bearing interest at 6 per cent., receivable in payment of taxes, 
and payable in two years, in order to pay the workmen for repairing and pav¬ 
ing the injured streets, as follows: 200 notes of $5; 150 notes of $8; 115 
notes of $10. See vol. VII., Town Meeting Records, p. 31. 


54 


EARLIEST SHIP-YARDS. 


houses in its neighbourhood, and carried destruction 
almost to Weybosset bridge. The tenants barely 
escaped the wreck of their dwellings . 1 The ruin 
was only exceeded by that of Philip’s war. The walls 
which now confine the river, and the new streets, at 
a much higher level, and which have destroyed the 
original character of the locality, are the work of a 
later and more prosperous time. It is not easy to 
recall the scene, during the latter half of the last 
century, when Mill bridge saw the building of many 
of the earliest brigs, sloops and schooners which 
sailed for the West Indies, or bore arms as privateers 
during the Revolution . 2 

1. The flood continued during the 6th and 7th of January. The neighbour¬ 
ing streets, houses and business establishments were swept away. The cove 
afforded room for the waters to lose something of their force, so that the 
bridge escaped destruction. See Providence Gazette , Jan. 10, 1784. 

2. Some of these were launched by an ancient house yet standing, west of 
the old Canal market. The “ Crawford house ” was built by John Crawford, 
who died in 1722. Its door originally stood two steps above the street. The 
entrance is now into the second story. There were other ship-yards on the 
west side of the Mooshassuc. On the 18th of April, 1753, the Town Meeting 
ordered a lease of land on the west side of the Mooshassuc, for the purpose of 
ship-building, a short distance below Mill bridge. A little below the Crawford 
house, on the other side of the river, stood the old workhouse. Before it 
was a wharf which accommodated the seagoing schooners of the last century. 
In 1769, the Town Meeting authorized the Town Council to repair the work- 
house wharf. 



THE PROSPECT. 


55 


When they had thus distributed the home-lots, 
and set up house and mill, the Townsmen were at 
leisure to estimate the chances of the success or fail¬ 
ure of their Plantation. The prospect was not 
encouraging, and the merit of their success can only 
be rightly appreciated after a view of the difficulties 
overcome. 

A more extended experience in colonization has 
taught a lesson which in the seventeenth century, 
was but ill understood. Unless there be a practical 
monopoly or a great staple product, the capital in¬ 
vested in new countries is generally sunk, and only 
in the second generation is there a surplus left for 
improvements or accumulation. Massachusetts had 
some wealthy immigrants, was supported by a power¬ 
ful corporation, and that in its turn, was aided by a 
rising sect at home. Yet emigration to New England 
yielded no profit to any that undertook it. Governor 
Winthrop, who had sold a valuable estate in England, 
died poor. 1 Massachusetts had little to spare, either 
of men or money, for aid to her own new plantations, 

1. Johnson’s Wonderworking Providences, Mass. Hist. Coll., second series, 
vol. VII., p. 26. 


56 


THE PROSPECT. 


still less to independent or unfriendly ones. Hence, 
she steadily, and for a year or two, successfully, 
opposed the settlement at Hartford. The planters 
of Massachusetts were carefully chosen, and there 
were among them workmen skilled in all the crafts 
useful in a new country. No abler body of men was 
ever sent from England on such an errand. Within 
a few years, the vessels of Massachusetts made 
voyages to Madeira, and New England Puritans 
gathered their first profits by supplying Spanish 
Papists with codfish, wherewith to keep their Lent. 
Yet the wealth of Massachusetts, at the end of the 
seventeenth century, (except in Boston and a few 
other seaports), was very small, and the people had 
few comforts. 1 This was the case, although they 
had oak and other timber, and fuel in abundance— 
hemp and fax—and many vegetables, then and now 
in constant use, growing spontaneously in the fields.* 2 
Rhode Island saw the earliest attempt to found a 
colony without capital or foreign aid. Among the 

1. This subject is considered in a paper in Mass. Hist. Collections, third 
series, vol. VIII., p. 338. 

2. Wood’s New England Prospect. Prince Society’s ed., p. 15. 


THE PROSPECT. 


57 


associates of Williams were no men of wealth, or 
of much mechanical skill. They were nearly all 
farmers, and expected to draw their subsistence from 
the soil. Their dreams of prosperity (if any such 
they had), were of meadow lands, cornfields, and 
flocks in the valley of the Mooshassuc, and not, like 
those of the men of Boston, of warehouses and 
anchorage by the shores of their Bay. They had 
little beside the household effects which they brought 
with them, and their Massachusetts neighbours did 
their best to prevent their acquiring more. It was 
not easy in those days, to lay the foundations even 
of an agricultural community. The country was 
densely wooded and must be cleared. The Indians 
had no cattle, and knew the use of few vegetables, 
save corn. Little which was of immediate necessity, 
could be bought from them. The native grass was 
coarse and several seasons were required in order to 
make good meadows. Some time passed before the 
Plantations had cattle. They had, at first, little 
money to buy them, not corn enough to feed them, 
and no sufficient shelter during the winter. 1 In 


1. Williams’s Key, p. 92. 


58 


DISCOURAGEMENTS. 


1642, the English in Rhode Island worked with 
"Howes,” in want of ploughs. In December, 1636, 1 
there were only thirty ploughs in Massachusetts. Of 
the thirty, probably not one was brought to Rhode 
Island. 2 The Plantations were long strangers to 
beef, milk or butter. In 1636, a cow in Massachu¬ 
setts cost twenty-five or thirty pounds, a pair of 
oxen, £40, and corn was sold at 5s. a bushel. James 
Brown, 3 mentions that in the time of his grandfather, 
Chad Brown, "the Indians stole everything they 
could lay their hands on,”—"a cow was sold in 
Providence for twenty-two pounds in silver,” 4 and 
that when after a season of unusually hard work, 

1. Winthrop’s Journal, 1st ed., p. 114. Savage’s Winthrop, I., p. 206. 

2. Prince’s Annals, Mass. Hist. Society’s ed., 1633, p. 83. 

3. MS. in possession of R. I. Hist. Soc. 

4. In 1642, (Johnson’s Wonderworking Providences, p. 35,) the price of a 
cow was £22 in Massachusetts. Hubbard, p. 238: All sorts of great cattle, 
(1636—1640), usually sold for £25 per head. The price fell in 1640, to £15 and 
£10 per head, afterwards to £5. (Mass. Hist. Coll., third series, vol. V., 
p. 268). In 1633 a cow cost £20 in Plymouth, a house and garden in Plymouth, 
£10, another £15. (Plymouth Records). In 1634, another was sold for £20. 
But Providence had not even the wealth of Plymouth. These were prices paid 
in days long before the issue of paper money, and represented sums far greater 
than their present nominal value. Such was the experience of “the Bay.” 
That Rhode Island suffered privations even more severe, may be learned, or 
inferred, from the writings of Williams. 


THEIR SUPPLIES. 


59 


the townsmen endeavored to refresh their spirits, by 
a festival, the chief luxury was a boiled bass with¬ 
out butter. 

To supply their want of cattle, the Plantations 
soon had ample stock of swine and goats. These 
were more hardy, and required but little attention, 
being, according to the complaint of their neighbours, 
only too ready to get their own living, and to help 
themselves. There was no complaint of a lack of 
animal food. The Indian methods of killing game 
without fire arms had permitted great increase of 
their numbers. 1 The shores yielded abundance of 
wild fowl and shell fish. There was, sometimes, a 
want of corn, after a bad harvest, but enough of all 
other kinds of food. Williams wrote, (January 10, 
1637-8,) to Governor Winthrop, for a manservant 
for their island of Prudence, where their plantation 
had become successful. In 1641, cattle were numer¬ 
ous both at Providence and Warwick. In 1642, 2 
Acquetneck abounded in cattle beyond the rest of 
the country. Gorton and his companions had been 
laborious and successful at Warwick, and the Massa- 


1, Mass. Hist. Coll., first series, vol. V., p. 7. 


2. Hubbard, p. 345. 


60 


THE CLIMATE. 


chusetts soldiers found ample plunder upon their 
lands. But with all these alleviations, the condition 
of the settlers was one of great hardship, and after 
several years, one of only comparative comfort.i 
They endeavoured to cheer their spirits with the 
" wine that maketh glad the heart of man,” Wil¬ 
liams 2 attests that the Rhode Island English made 
good wines of grapes and strawberries, both of 
which he had often tasted. But in this last manufac¬ 
ture, later generations have not been tempted to 
persevere. 

The experience of the founders, during their five 
years in Massachusetts was doubtless of much ser¬ 
vice in hastening their success. They had a better 
beginning than Plymouth where everything had been 
new, and unforeseen. They had learned to guard them¬ 
selves against the climate, and like their former brethren 
of " the Bay,” could accommodate themselves to the 
extremes of American temperature. All the early 
writers of New England, whatever their other disa¬ 
greements, concur in ascribing their greatest suffer- 

1. Callender’s Century Sermon, R. I. Hist. Col., vol. IV., p. 74. 

2. Key to the Indian Language, p. 122, Narr. Club’s ed. 


THE CLIMATE. 


61 


ings, rather to the summer heat, than to the Arctic 
cold . 1 

It should be remembered that they had plenty of 
fuel, but for summer only the heavy woolen clothes, 
which they brought or imported from England. 
There was no cotton, and linen was only a luxury. 
They complained that the unaccustomed heat aggra¬ 
vated all inflammatory diseases, and was the princi¬ 
pal cause of the fatal termination of many. 

The natural resources of the Plantations, their 
waterfalls and harbour, required supplies of capital 
and labour, which the settlers could not command. 
To a people of such narrow means, the Mooshassuc 
was as valuable as the Blackstone. The English of 
Rhode Island were too few for the work which was 
forced upon them, and were affrighted at being left 
alone in the presence of the unbroken strength of 
the Narragansetts . 2 

So little encouragement was offered to mechanics 

1. Hubbard, Mass. Hist. Coll., 2d series, vol. V. p. 20, c. 4. Josselyn’s Two 
Voyages to New England, p. 47. So also Lechford. 

2. The unfavourable events which tended to discourage emigration, will be 
considered more at large in a future paper, at present a few illustrations must 
suffice. 


6 


62 


EARLY PRIVATIONS. 


that during a long period, the most necessary crafts 
had sometimes no representatives in the Plantations. 
In 1649, (June 15,) Williams wrote to Winthrop, 
that there was no smith in Providence. Many years 
later, (January 27, 1703-4,)* the Town Meeting gave 
to a smith and to a weaver, each a lot, (on Constitu¬ 
tion hill,) to induce them to carry on their work in 
the Town street. 

These earliest obstacles to the success of the 
Plantations, the want of capital and of diversity of 
skill, find continual illustration in the public records. 
The letter of the Colony to John Clarke, then in 
England, 2 gives a vigorous description of the troubles 
of a generation too poor to avail themselves of their 
natural advantages, and exposed to the vindictive 
legislation of their neighbours, (November 5, 1658). 
The colonists were at first well armed, but as their 
fowling pieces wore out, the means of their repair 
and renewal were but scanty. From want of fire¬ 
arms, which Massachusetts would not suffer them to 
purchase, it became necessary to teach children the 

1. Vol. I., p. 5, Town Meeting Records. 

2. R. I. Col. Records, vol. III., pp. 396—399. 


WANT OF CAPITAL. 


63 


use of the bow. 1 Narragansett Bay, was, during 
the seventeenth century, navigated only by sloops 
and schooners, bearing the flags of Massachusetts 
and the New Netherlands. The officers of these 
vessels too often robbed the plantation of Winthrop 
and Williams at Prudence, 2 or bought the swine and 
goats from unfaithful keepers, who never accounted 
to the owners for the money which they had received. 3 

Had they possessed a very moderate capital, and 
a few men bred to the sea, the Plantations might 
have participated in the fisheries which laid the 
foundation of the wealth of Boston. Even so late as 
1675-6, Newport had only two or three pinnaces 
and sloops, which were employed in watching the 
Indians. 

In 1658, 4 a year of scarcity and trouble, "all com¬ 
modities were drawn from the neighbouring colonies, 
except produce.” There was no grain save Indian 

1. Code of 1647, R. I. Col. Records, vol. I., pp. 153-4. 

2. Williams to Winthrop, Oct. 9,1654. Narr. Club, vol. VI., p. 177. Killing of 
Winthrop’s goats at Prudence island. 

3. Winthrop papers, p. 288. Coddington at Rhode Island had made a like 
complaint in 1648. 

4. See letter of Williams to Winthrop, 15 Feb., 1654. Narr. Club, vol. VI., 
p. 280. Legislative resolutions at Warwick, before quoted. 


64 


WANT OF CAPITAL. 


corn, and the revengeful Puritans of Massachusetts 
threatened to combine, and to sell that only at their 
own rates. This was the year in which Khode Island 
refused the demand of the United Colonies for the 
expulsion of the Quakers. 1 In 1654, 2 Mr. Foote, an 
Englishman, conversant with such things, proposed 
to establish iron works in the neighbourhood of 
Providence. Williams favoured the project, but the 
townsmen were so disunited that they were unable 
to respond to his offer, and the enterprising mechanic 
went to aid in building up the prosperity of New Jer¬ 
sey. When the charter of Charles II. was received in 
Newport, the Colony sent an invitation to Providence 
to join in the celebration of so great and unexpected 
a boon. A cheerful union of all the unfriendly and 
contentious towns might have been in many ways 
beneficial. But the Town Meeting of Providence 
declined to send soldiers 3 to join in the parade, excus- 

1. Letter of United Colonies, Sept. 12, 1G57. Reply of Rhode Island, Octo¬ 
ber 13, 1657, March 13, 1657-8. 

2. Williams’s letters, Narr. Club, vol. 6, pp. 284, 286. 

3. Nov. 18,1663, “ It is ordered that concerning the warrant which came from 
the President to send soldiers to solemnize the receipt of the charter, that a 
letter be drawn up and sent to the Court of Commissioners to excuse the not 
going.” 


WANT OF CAPITAL. 


65 


ing itself because of its poverty, and the hardness of 
the times. 

This its first difficulty was not surmounted, during 
the days of the old agricultural town. It met the 
freemen on every side, in every undertaking which 
was proposed. Long after the first settlement, 
(according to Governor Ward,) 1 the people were 
very poor, the farmers had an indifferent market, 
and there was no navigation until a. d. 1700. Even 
the great harbour of Newport did not attract a mari¬ 
time population, except occasional adventurers who 
were in quest of a larger toleration than civilized 
states are willing to bestow. There was little to 
invite the enterprise which follows capital. The in¬ 
crease of the Plantations was slow, and their wealth 
for a long time inconsiderable. 

In the absence of information from contemporary 
diaries or letters (save the few references in the cor¬ 
respondence of Williams,) the Town Records, from 
which we learn the existence of these difficulties, 
give also the chief information as to the times and 
modes in which they were met and overcome. 


1. R. I. Col. Records, vol. V., p. 8. 


66 


LOCAL IMPROVEMENTS. 


As religious controversies were excluded from the 
Town Meetings, these were wholly occupied with 
material interests, and with disputes among farmers 
about questions peculiar to themselves. In a few 
years their small allotments had been rearranged 
and consolidated. With a little increase of property 
they became desirous of better and more ample pas¬ 
ture land than was afforded by the east side of the 
"Salt River.” The first project which was enter¬ 
tained, after the establishment of the Town Mill, 
was the building of a bridge. There was, in the 
early days of the Town, a ford at low water, across 
the cove, where is now the present Steeple street. 
With this, and with a ferry to the meadows of Wey- 
bosset, the first two generations at the South end 
were forced to be content. Population gathered 
around the Mill, and the neighbouring tannery, and 
soon a highway* (one of the earliest) was opened, 


1. May 27, 1671, the order of the Town Meeting mentions “ a highway going 
down to Mooshassuc river,” by the house of Thomas Olney, Jr. It connected 
the bridge, mill and tannery, with the northeast part of the town. This was 
one of the earliest highways. The mention of it, is as a boundary in the grant 
of land to make up Thomas Olney, Jr.’s five acre home-lot. The way must 
have been quite as ancient as the tannery. Page 256 Deeds and Transcripts. 



THE FIRST BRIDGE. 


67 


from the tannery, in a northeasterly direction towards 
the upper end of the Town street. 

On the " 15th of the 12th mo., 1654, so called,” 
Williams wrote to Winthrop, making mention of a 
"Mr. White now wintering in Warwick,” and say¬ 
ing, "many of ours have thought of trying his skill 
about a new bridge at Providence, and he hath 
promised to come over to us, to cousult, but the 
weather hath hindered.” But the means of the set¬ 
tlers were scanty, and their progress slow. They 
had no payment to offer him but Proprietary land. 
The project failed at that time, and waited eight 
years longer for its accomplishment. The need of 
ampler pasturage grew more pressing as time went 
on. When the townsmen felt secure from the 
aggressions of neighbour colonies, under the Charter 
of Charles II. they applied themselves in earnest to 
local improvements. "June, 1662, first Monday,” 
* * "Ordered that a bridge be made over the 

Mooshasic river, by Thomas Olney, Jr., his dwell¬ 
ing house, John Broune, Edward Smith, Thomas 
Harris, Jr., John Steere, Epenetus Olney, Thomas 
Arnold, Thomas Olney, Jr., and George Palmer, 


68 


THE FIRST BRIDGE. 


are appointed to get the timber of the said bridge, 
and to frame it, and then to give notice unto the 
surveyors, and warn the inhabitants together, to 
mend the highways and then to rear the said bridge, 
and this bridge to be done before the next hay time.” 

This was above the mill, where the stream was 
narrow. This time, the townsmen relied upon their 
own mechanical skill. They were not yet able to 
encounter the difficulties of a bridge over a tidal 
river. 

This ancient bridge was the second public estab¬ 
lishment in the Plantations. That it saved much 
time and distance to the weary yeomen may be in¬ 
ferred from a deed of Thomas Olney, Jr., dated 14th 
March, 1669, in which he described the mouth of 
the Wonasquatucket, as being about half a mile 
westward of the Town of Providence. That the 
bridge was of no great solidity, would appear from 
the vote of the Town Meeting, January 27, 1664 : 
" Ordered that John Whipple be sent for, to confer 
with him about mending the bridge. Ordered that 
Thomas Harris, Senr., and Valentine Whitman shall 
go unto all the inhabitants of the Town to see what 


TOLLS. 


69 


they will contribute to the mending of the bridge at 
Weybossett.” The freemen had little to spare even 
for the most useful public works. "October 26, 
1666, R. Williams, Moderator, voted that all who 
contributed to repairing the Town bridge, are to have 
liberty to meet, and make orders concerning the 
same,” probably to levy tolls for their own repay¬ 
ment. The public spirit of the townsmen was not 
yet sufficient to compel them to support this bene¬ 
ficial work out of their own substance. They were 
content to exact what the}' could from the wayfarers 
of Massachusetts. 27 January, 1667, Town Meet¬ 
ing: "Voted and ordered that Mr. Roger Williams 
shall receive tolls of all strangers which shall here¬ 
after pass over the bridge at Wapwaysett, also that 
of all inhabitants of the Town he shall receive what 
each person is freely willing to contribute towards 
the supporting of the aforesaid bridge.” This was 
the sole work of its kind, twenty years after Wil¬ 
liams had been laid to rest. 1 Another generation 
accomplished the greatest improvement ever made 
in the old Town—the bridge at Weybosset. 


1. It continues to the present day. 


70 


LOCAL NAMES. 


As the people became familiar with their new 
home, well known regions gained popular names, 
which they retain at the present day. " Cat Swamp,” 
a haunt of the boys of the first generation, is so 
styled in a deed recorded (p. 202) in 1668. The 
designation was even then familiar. "Swan Point” 
can boast of a like antiquity. 1 

Other early names of well known localities have 
passed away with their owners and with their times. 
Where were the eminences well known in the deeds 
of the first proprietors, as "Bewitt’s Brow,” "Ob¬ 
servation Rock,” etc. ? 

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, 
Thomas Olney had acquired a part of the estates of 
Gregory Dexter, at the North end, and had become 
one of the chief landholders of his day. His name 
displaced that of Dexter from the street or lane south 
of his property. It was called " Dexter’s lane ” 2 so 


1. April 27, 1685, Town Meeting Records, vol. III., p. 90: “ Ordered, that a 
highway shall be and remain, from the lane called Hearnden’s lane, eastward 
through the place called the Second opening into ye greate Swamp, and so to 
ye Salt water, about ye poynte called Swann poynt.” 

2. See Town Meeting records, January 27th, of that year. 


PROSPEROUS FARMERS. 


71 


late as 1695-6. Soon after it is called " Olney’s 
lane” in the same documents. 1 

Notwithstanding complaints of poverty and dis¬ 
tress, there were in the first generation some pros¬ 
perous farmers whose granaries were more spacious 
than their dwellings. George Fox (Journal) says, 
that in 1672 he preached "in a great barn, to a great 
throng of people.” Fox had seen agriculture on a 
large scale, in many parts of England, and knew 
what a great barn was. He was probably not the 
first or the last in Providence who availed himself of 
such structures. His incidental testimony to the 
capacity of some of them, is more satisfactory than 
that of a townsman who had forgotten, or had never 
seen, the homesteads of the fatherland. 

But at this point all improvement was interrupted 
by what was deemed by many, the utter wreck and 
ruin of the Town. Its abandonment by so many of 


1. 27th October, 1656: “ Ordered that Epenetus Olney shall have a home- 
lot laid out to him at the head of Mr. Dexter, his lot.” Epenetus Olney (son 
of Thomas) had sufficient influence to procure his admission to a “ proprietor’s 
ri^ht.” He was probably the last who was so admitted. The lot mentioned 
was, during four generations, the site of the “ Olney Tavern,” and was, until 
recently, owned by Olney’s posterity. 


72 


SECLUSION OF THE TOWN. 


its citizens, the destruction of property, and the 
years of poverty which followed Philip’s war, were 
fatal to all hope of expansion, until the work of the 
old planters had been done over again. But the 
second generation was not inferior to the first, and 
in the course of two decades the old storehouses 
were replenished, former improvements were re¬ 
sumed, and some of the old controversies with them. 

In an examination of its earliest documents, our 
attention is soon arrested by the seclusion of the 
primitive town. The Dutch were always secret, 
when not open, enemies. A broad tract of wilder¬ 
ness separated the Plantations from Connecticut, but 
not broader than the separation established by mutual 
dislikes. Massachusetts had closed her gates against 
her exiled dissenters. Plymouth alone showed a 
timid sympathy. It was one of the earliest efforts 
of the settlers to mitigate the evil. They opened, 
at the first opportunity, such highways toward the 
Seekonk and to the Pawtucket, as might give them 
the needful intercourse with the only friends which 
were left. 

The origin of some of the most important high- 


THE EARLIEST HIGHWAYS. 


73 


ways, the first indications of growth and stability, 
is now scarcely to be traced. The wilderness lay in 
common and the settlers soon ascertained for them¬ 
selves where were the shortest lines and the fewest 
obstacles, and hewed their way through the woods 
without the formality of a vote in the Town Meeting. 
After a few years, when much of the Proprietary 
land had become private estates, and cartways were 
needed for the transport of their crops, broad high¬ 
ways were "stated” by order of the Town Meeting, 
i. e ., were established by courses and distances, metes 
and bounds. These followed the same direction as 
the old bridle-ways, and the surveyors were often 
directed to " take in the old paths.” The new roads 
were commonly of the width of three or four rods. 1 
Their legal establishment is often the earliest notice 
in the records, of ways which must have been 
almost coeval with the town. 

Two of the most important of these must have 
been required by the earliest necessities of the 
townsmen, but we have no account of their begin¬ 
ning. These were, the way to the "Upper Ferry,” 

1. See order of the Proprietors, 1654. 

7 


74 


THE EARLIEST HIGHWAYS. 


(now the Red Bridge), and the "Common Road” or 
"Country Road,” towards Pawtucket. By the ferry 
was the chief highway to the Plymouth Colony, inter¬ 
course with which was always friendly, and often of 
absolute necessity, while there was as yet little inter¬ 
course with Boston. The "common road” opened 
farther communications with Rehoboth, which then 
occupied the whole territory between Attleborough 
and Bristol, and with the not utterly hostile border¬ 
ers of Massachusetts, who might be inclined to occa¬ 
sional good offices. The fisheries at the Upper 
Ferry and near Pawtucket Falls, possessed in the 
early days of the Town an importance which they 
have long since lost. The "Country Road,” or 
"Common Road” diverged in a northwesterly direc¬ 
tion from the Town street, near its northern extrem¬ 
ity, curved partly around, and then passed over a 
sand hill where was afterwards (1700) the public 
burial place, and then turned northeastwardly 
towards Pawtucket. It was the earliest means of 
intercourse with the valley of the Blackstone which 
it crossed by a ford, at a distance of a mile above 
the falls. Blackstone and his few neighbours and 


THE EARLIEST HIGHWAYS. 


75 


the occasional visitors from Massachusetts, must have 
often journeyed over the route, long before it 
attracted the attention of the Town Meeting, or 
afforded occasion for local controversies. Of nearly 
equal antiquity, was the way to Louisquissuck. This 
for a short distance followed the course of the "coun¬ 
try” or "common road,” and then diverged toward 
the northwest into the Proprietors’ woodlands. 1 The 
whole region at the northwest was, and to a quite 
recent period continued to be, densely covered with 
woods. This was the earliest attempt to improve it 
by public authority. In 1682, (Feb. 19, p. 19,) 
the Town Meeting had made an order for a highway 
to be "stated at or about Louisquissuck,” "to go up 
into the country.” This vague direction sufficiently 
indicates the solitude of the woodlands. The 
"order” was ineffectual and was renewed in the fol¬ 
lowing year. The old North road of two centuries 
ago, has lost much of its importance, being super- 

1. Town Meeting Records, vol. III., pp. 76-77, 1st Monday in June, 1683, “ a 
road through Louisquissuck woods” was ordered to. be “stated,” but no 
termini or bounds, “ also so many other highways as they may judge at present 
of necessity.” The committee, Capt. Arthur Fenner, Capt. William Hopkins, 
and Joseph Williams, could prosecute the work in the Proprietors* forest, at 
their discretion. 


76 


THE EARLIEST HIGHWAYS. 


seded by highways towards villages of which there 
was then no anticipation. Its chief interest could 
not have been foreseen by its projectors. Its south¬ 
ernmost portion is now the best known and the 
most frequented. Under the dismal modern name 
of Sexton street, it has beheld the last journeys 
of multitudes who have taken a final leave of the 
Plantations. 

These primitive highways must have been among 
the earliest efforts of the old agricultural settlers, 
and yet the first notice of them in the public records 
occurs some forty years later, when the ancient 
bridle-paths were first " stated ” and widened by the 
order of the Town . 1 

1. July 27, 1671, p. 258. It being the Town’s quarter day, Mr. William Car¬ 
penter chosen moderator. 

“ Whereas, John Scott hath this day exhibited a bill to your town that they 
would take some course for the laying out of a highway to Mr. Blackstoue’s 
river, where it may be most convenient. It is ordered by the Town that the 
two surveyors, with Thomas Arnold, Senr., and John Whipple, Senr., do by 
the last day of August next ensuing, go to John Scott’s and survey or lay out 
a highway to the aforesaid Blackstone's river, for strangers and others to pass 
to the said river, where it may be the most convenient to pass over the said 
river—to the best of their understandings, with the least damage as may be 
to the owners of the said land, to make return thereof to the Town for their 
ratification of the same.” 

This is the first order of the Town respecting a highway at Pawtucket. 


REHOBOTH. 


77 


As the seventeenth century went on, there was 
some correspondence with Boston, and between Bos¬ 
ton and New York, now become an English province. 
The "Highway” and its tributaries gained additional 
importance. After the second charter, fears of 
Massachusetts died away. Increasing comforts 
brought a desire for friendly intercourse and trade. 
At the North end of the Town, where were the 
Town Mill, the tannery, and the houses clustering 
about it, there were also a few years later, the chief 
inns, the Courts and the General Assembly. Reho- 
both during those years, a larger and more prosper¬ 
ous town than the Plantations, felt much sympathy 
with their political ideas, and the social relations 
between them became more intimate. Until Provi¬ 
dence had a physician of its own, the few sick or 
disabled were forced to send to Rehoboth for medical 
or surgical aid. During the seventeenth century, 
the chief extension of the Town was in that direction. 
Providence was now the resting place where travel¬ 
lers halted for the night, on the way to New York, 
and the " King’s Post ” carried despatches between 
Colonial governors along the route of the present 


78 


THE UPPER FERRY 


"shore line.” In 1678-9, (March,) the Town Meet¬ 
ing, by a grant of land, made provision for a perma¬ 
nent ferry at "Narrow passage,” in order that travel¬ 
lers might no longer be delayed in crossing the 
Seekonk, through the caprice or absence of the 
neighbours 1 It will be observed that from that 
early day those who have done military service for 
the town, have been among the first to be recom¬ 
pensed by the appointments within its gift. 

The establishment of the ferry was the first im- 

1. Grant to Andrew Edmunds. 3d March, 1678-9, (p. 16, Town Meeting 
Records). “ It is voted and ordered by ye Toune that whereas Andrew Ed¬ 
munds hath preferred a bill to ye Toune this day, desiring of ye Toune (in 
reference to his service done in ye Avar time), ye accommodation of about two 
acres of Land for his conveniency near ye waterside at ye place (in ye necke) 
commonly called ye narrow passage, he chusing it for his conveniency for ye 
building him a house, he there intending ye keeping of a ferry. The which ye 
Toune considering of, have seen cause to order, and it is hereby ordered and 
granted unto ye aforesaid Andrew Edmunds his conveniency, (if it may be) at 
ye place aforesaid. The quantity of four acres, and not exceeding that compu¬ 
tation. And ye surveyor of ye Toune who shall be employed in ye laying out 
of said land shall see to ye retaining, (there, to ye Toune’s use), a suitable and 
convenient privilidge, (alsoe) notwithstanding. And make returne thereof 
according to its proper platform thereof, according as ye Toune order doth 
enjoyne ye surveyors, in ye respect of their laying out of land. The which 
aforesaid quantity of lande by ye Toune granted, being also so layd out as ye 
Toune’s privilledges to ye ferry be not infringed thereby, as before expressed, 
as provided therein. The said land is hereby given and granted, and to be ye 
undoubted right of ye said Andrew Edmunds, to him and his heires forever.” 


ANGELL STREET. 


79 


provement in the communications with "the Bay.” 
On the 27th of April, 1683, "It is ordered yt ye 
surveior or surveiors doe with all convenient speede 
state a highway to ye Narrow passage, and it to take 
out of any man’s land, making it up unto ye said per¬ 
sons, out of ye towne’s common, both in quantity and 
in quality, and said surveiors or surveior shall be 
paid for ye doing thereof, out of ye Treasury of this 
Toune.” This was but a widening of the old bridle¬ 
path through the woods, required by the increase of 
travel. No breadth is specified, or direction. Such 
was not the practice of those days. The surveyors 
were left to their discretion, only conforming, if pos¬ 
sible, to the rule that "every highway be left four 
poles.” By its being the first to gain additional 
width, we may believe that the road to the Upper 
Ferry was esteemed the most important highway 
towards the eastward. It is suggestive of the local 
jealousies which were as wakeful in those days as in 
the present, that a year after the opening of the road 
to the ferry, the Town ordered the old "Common 
road ” to Pawtucket River to be widened and im¬ 
proved. It would seem that the neighbouring land- 


80 


THE PAWTUCKET ROAD 


holders were at variance among themselves. The 
order of July 27, 1671, seems to have been ineflec- 
tual or unsatisfactory, each one desiring that the im¬ 
proved highway should be near his own house. 1 

Both of these early highways to the Upper Ferry 
and to Pawtucket riverj had their origin in the same 
primitive wants. The last was the occasion of far 
greater care and expense to the Town. 2 

1. Town Meeting Records, vol. III., p. 81, “April 28, 1684, being a Quarter 
Meeting ye 27th day of ye month, falling upon ye first day of ye weeke.” 
“ Thomas Olney, Moderator. Whereas, there hath been a bill preferred to ye 
Toune for stating a common highway or road over Pawtucket River, both for 
cart drift, horse and foot. It is therefore ordered that ye way over Pawtucket 
River shall be and remaine at ye ancient and comon roade, at ye end of ye 
hills on ye w r estern part of John Scot, his planting laud or field, ye which 
leadeth to ye plains on Rehoboth side of ye river called ye Western plaine.” 
p. 84, b. This order seems to have quieted controversy, of which no more ap¬ 
pears upon the Town records. It appears by a record of August 21,1689, pp. 84-85, 
that the road to Pawtucket River ran a little northward of “ where Blaxtun’s 
(Blackstone’s) house formerly stood.” It had been destroyed by the Indians. 

2. A few citations will suffice. Town Meeting Records, 25 June, 1700. Two 
“ surveiors are ordered to report on the Public way over Pawtucket River, and 
to see what is wanting for making the way passable for coming out of the river 
when the water is up.” Records, vol. I., p. 4. “ Town Meeting held at Provi¬ 
dence April 29, 1716, it being the Town’s Quarter Day. . . Upon a bill pre¬ 
sented this day, by Capt. Sylvanus Scott, it is granted that the said Capt. Scott 
shall have liberty to fence the highway that was the country road over Paw¬ 
tucket River, provided he make convenient carte gates in the roade, and maiu- 
taine them for the space of four years, Provided Pawtucket bridge stands and 
is passable so long, not else. This is intended only where the highway goeth 
through his own land.” 


THE FARMING TOWN. 


81 


A community of formers was, in those days, seldom 
destitute of topics of controversy about their own 
boundaries and their neighbours’ cattle. The old 
agricultural Plantations furnished no exception. The 
safety of their flocks superseded all thoughts of the 
comfort of travellers. The most ancient streets, then 
mere cartways, were the subjects of frequent dis¬ 
putes in the Town Meetings. The " Highway,” the 
eastern boundary of the " home-lots,” was an espe¬ 
cial scene of such contentions. A few citations 
will enable us to recall the appearance of the form¬ 
ing town in the days of its first and second genera¬ 
tions. The negligence of the owners of land upon 
the Highway required the interposition of the 
Town to compel the maintenance of proper fences. 
On the 11th December, 1866, the owners in the 
" Neck ” were peremptorily ordered to attend the 
Town Meeting on December 25th. This was a dis- 
mal occupation for Christmas, but for whatever rea¬ 
son, the meeting was adjourned until January 27, 
1666-7. The landholders then appeared, and were 
well provided with the usual reasons for not doing 
their legal duty. In spite of their opposition, their 


82 


FENCING THE HIGHWAYS. 


fellow townsmen, "ordered that the fences in the 
neck be made up by the first of April next.” It 
seems that, however unwillingly, they obeyed. 1 For 
the greater security of their cattle, the Town Meet¬ 
ing first permitted and then required gates across the 
Highway, to be set up and maintained by the owners 
of the adjacent fields. Then (in 1698) the Town 
ordered all these barriers to be removed, then again 
to be restored. Votes upon this subject were of no 
infrequent occurrence, as increase of travel gave 
annoyance to the owners of bordering estates. 2 
One instance will suffice to show the appearance of the 
Eastern hill-side, in the latter days of the agricultural 
town, January 27, 1713. Fencing of the highways 
at the South end of Providence neck was permitted 
for five years. Vol. II. p. 17, Quarter Day, 28th 
April, 1717 : "* * On reading a bill presented 

by Messrs. Nicholas Power, Benjamin Tilliughast, 
Samuel Winsor, Joseph Whipple, Joseph and Rich- 

1. See also Town Meeting Records, April, 1694. 

2. Fencing was troublesome and expensive in those days, when laborers 
were few. The fences and gates in the highways were among the most frequent 
subjects of contention during the whole period of the agricultural town. Only 
a few specimens have been cited. 

See Town Meeting Records, November, 1698, February, 1704. 



THE HIGHWAYS. 


83 


ard Fenner, and Mr. Richard Browne, for the liberty 
to fence in the highway, with their land at the lower 
end of the Neck, for the space of five years more, 
as it hath been the five years last past. It is voated 
and graunted, provided the petitioners or their part¬ 
ners make and maintaine a couple of carte gates for 
the conveniency of public passage in ye highway.” 

There were gates across Power’s lane (now Power 
street), as well as across the highway, many years 
after this order. It appears from the Records of 
January 19, 1739, that there was a gate in the High¬ 
way across what is now called Meeting street. In 
that year, " the Highway that leadeth from Provi¬ 
dence Town House ” (e. e., the first Court House in 
Gaol lane,) only extended to Ferry lane, now Hope 
street, and was there closed by a gate. 1 

The "Highway at the head of the Lots,” was 
barred like a private way across a farm. No greater 
regard was paid to the convenience of travellers 
toward Massachusetts. July 20, 1720, the Town 
Meeting voted that "Hamden’s lane and the highway 

1. The Court House in Gaol lane was ordered by the Town Meeting, 27 Jan., 
1729-30, and finished in 1731. 


84 


THE UPPER FERRY. 


thence to Pawtucket, be fenced for five years, pro¬ 
vided sufficient gates be set up and maintained in said 
lane forjiorses and carts to pass through, as well as 
footmen.” At a later day, as we shall note, it was 
thought necessary to secure the tranquillity of Benefit 
street in a like manner. With the exception of the 
Town street, the most ancient highways of the Plan¬ 
tations were in a state of barricade until a late 
period of the last century. The Upper Ferry, after 
the mill and the bridge at Wapwaysett, was the third 
public institution of the Town. During three gen¬ 
erations, the few adventurous travellers of the Town 
street went on horseback through Power’s or Olney’s 
lane, by the Highway, afterwards called "Ferry lane,” 
down the easterly part of what is now Angell street, 
to Rehoboth, Attleborough and Boston. They could 
choose their own hours and journey at their leisure, 
for there were no public conveyances until more than 
half of the last century had gone by . 1 

1. Madam Knight’s Journey to New York. She was two days on the road 
from Boston to Providence. She travelled under the escort of the ■“ King’s 
Post,” who went armed on account of the dangers of the way. The “ King’s 
Post ” doubtless went by the most populous and level country. Both going and 
returning she passed over the “ Upper Ferry.” See Madam Knight’s Journey, 
pp. 15, 67, 68, A. D. 1704. 


THE TOWN STREETE. 


85 


Little more was done during the remainder of the 
seventeenth century for the improvement of the 
East side of the " Salt River.” It was merely for 
the convenience of the neighbourhood, that the Town 
Meeting, (21 August, 1684,) directed Thomas Olney 
to " state the highway from the head of the lane called 
Dexter’s lane, and so through the Great Swampe from 
ye said lane.” The ways leading to the Seekonk, 
excepting the three original ones, Olney, Meeting 
and Power streets, are comparatively of recent 
origin. 1 

The centre of historical interest in the old Planta¬ 
tions is the primitive " Town Streete.” It was long 
the abode of every citizen of note or influence, and 
was the subject as well as the scene of some of the 
early controversies of the freemen. Its government 
and regulation furnished the model for those of the 
other highways, and to observe its fortunes, is to 
watch the development of the town. 

The old voluntary association of the first purchas- 


1. On the map, by Daniel Anthony, (1803), there appears no street between 
Olney’s lane and Sleeting street, and only three, then very recent ones, are be- 
tween Sleeting street and Power’s lane. 

8 


86 


THE EARLIEST STREET REGULATION. 


ers did little for each other’s comfort. It was not 
until the incorporation of the town, (1649), that 
any thought was bestowed upon such subjects. The 
Town street was continually flooded by currents of 
rain or melting snow from the abrupt hill-side. These 
were confined by no definite channels, and poured 
down from the narrow lanes and from the unoccupied 
home-lots. With mingled economy and resignation, 
the householders endured the evil. At length, on 
the "4th of the 12th month,” 1649, (probably urged 
by the experience of a severe winter,) their patience 
failed them, and the Town Meeting "ordered that 
every man shall mend and make good the highway 
before his house-lot or lots, within the compass of 
this neck, so that carts may pass and repass freely, 
and the said highways shall be mended before the 
first of May, next, as they well ought, even at their 
will,” i. e., if the owners were left to their own dis¬ 
cretion. It will be observed that the first difficulties 
were overcome, and that in 1649, the townsmen were 
well supplied with oxen. This is the earliest regu¬ 
lation of Providence streets. The duty of repairing 
them must have been but negligently performed, as 


THE PERILS OF THE HIGHWAY. 


87 


it was left to the zeal and diligence of the neighbour¬ 
ing owner, not quickened by any penalties. That 
the patriarchs of the Town were as little careful of 
their own security, as are any of their successors in 
these latter days, may be inferred from the following 
vote of the 28th, 5th month, 1651: " Robert Williams, 
Moderator, * Ordered that no man shall fall any 
trees, to offend any cartway, unless he take it off in 
twenty-four hours, and if any man shall do so, he 
shall forfeit 3s. 4cZ.” The perils of moonless nights 
and unlighted highways, must have been formidable 
when lenity was shown to carelessness like this. As 
time went on the townsmen found it necessary to 
stimulate the activity of their brother freemen, and 
to define their duties. On the first Monday of June, 
1664, (p. 173,) it was ordered that "every man in 
this Town which hath a team shall work one day a 
year with it at the highways.” " Every housekeeper 
which hath no team, is to work two da} 7 s a year at 
the highways.” This would have been an indifferent 
provision even for a country road. With nothing 
better, a much frequented street must have been 
sometimes scarcely endurable. Both the duty and 


88 


MENDING THE HIGHWAYS. 


the penalty were made more severe in the following 
year 1 : "Forasmuch as there hath been a great 
neglect in mending and repairing the highways of 
this Town, it is therefore ordered by this present 
assembly, that from this day forward every house¬ 
keeper in this Town shall work three days in a year 
at the highways, in case the surveyors see that there 
be need of so many days, and that all those that 
have teams, that is, four oxen, if the surveyors see 
there be occasion, and they who have but a yoke of 
oxen to come with them, and that in case that any 
person shall refuse or neglect coming upon the warn¬ 
ing of the surveyors, he shall forfeit 2s. 6d. for each 
day’s neglect, unto the Town Treasury, and those 
who have oxen, to forfeit Is. 6d. for a yoke, and 
those who neglect to come, or to send one to work 
in their room, shall be taken notice of by the sur¬ 
veyors, their names to be taken down and returned 
unto any one of the Assistants who shall grant forth 
a warrant to the constable to distrain the fine afore¬ 
said. But if any person neglecting coming to work 
either themselves, or with oxen, if they can excuse 


1. April 27,1665, vol. I., Deeds and Trancripts, p. 177. 


THE COMMERCIAL PERIOD BEGINNING. 


89 


themselves justly, either by sickness, or their oxen 
cannot be found, or sufficient excuse satisfactory to 
the Assistants, then to be free. Also that the sur¬ 
veyors give the inhabitants at least three days’ notice, 
but if the surveyors be found defective in their office 
in not warning people to come to work, and other¬ 
wise looking to their charge, then for the said sur- 
vej'ors to forfeit hsh. for each day’s neglect, that is, 
the three days aforesaid the which shall be distrained 
as aforesaid, but it is to be minded that the survey¬ 
ors’ teams are to go free.” 

A comparison of the phraseology of these orders 
seems to indicate that the townsmen of the first gen¬ 
eration were as skillful in technical excuses, and in 
colorable or pretended service, as their successors in 
later days. 

Nothing more effectual than this was done during 
seventy years more. The commercial period of the 
Town had now begun, and with increasing wealth and 
taxes a new generation insisted upon a more efficient 
magistracy. On the 11th of August, 1735, 1 the 
townsmen spoke their minds thus : " Whereas there 

1. Vol. IV., p. 54, Town Meeting Records. 


90 


REPAIRING THE HIGHWAYS. 


is few people that has any regard to doeing their 
duty in mending his Majesty’s highways in this Town, 
for remedy whereof, for the futer, it is hereby 
ordered that such persons in this Town that are re¬ 
quired by law to find a single hand, to work upon 
said highways, shall pay the sum of five shillings 
currant money for one day’s defect, and those that 
are liable by law to finde a teame shall pay the sum 
of 14 shillings for one day’s defect, and in case the 
work for repaireing said ways at any time shall not 
require a teame, then two able hands shall be required 
in lue thereof, and in default of appearance, being 
legally warned, shall pay a fine of five shillings for 
each man's defect.” That the householders of that 
day knew how to evade a disagreeable duty, is evi¬ 
dent, for it is farther "ordered, that it shall be in the 
discretion of any one of the surveyors of the high¬ 
ways that hath the charge of the work then in hand, 
to judge of the sufficiency of such hands as shall 
appeare, and if he judge any of them not sufficient 
to performe a day’s work, he ma}’ refuse to accept 
of them, and it shall be judged no appearance.” 
This was but a partial remedy. The evil remained, 


DRAINAGE. 


91 


while the Townsmen had become impatient of ills 
which former generations had borne in silence. 
" March ye 1st Day, Anno Dom., 1735-6, it being 
Monday the Meeting is again in being. * * It is 

voated and ordered that the owner of every house 
out of whose celler the water brakes forth, that is 
on the East side of the Towne Streete, shall, as soon 
as he conveniently can , make some subterraneous 
passage for such water, by which it may be conveyed 
into the River of this Town.” 1 Expensive works 
of this sort, to be undertaken by each house¬ 
holder according to his own plan and his own 
means, were never " convenient,” and the Town’s 
order remained a dead letter, like many others at 
that day. The reflection of a few months more, 
convinced the freemen that if they hoped for com¬ 
fort or safety in their chief highway, they must as¬ 
sume the care of it in their corporate capacity, and 
by the agency of their own officials. July 27, 1736, 
vol. IV., Town Meeting Records, pp. 60-61 : "It is 
voated and ordered that Col. Daniel Abbott, and 
Capt. William Hopkins draw up sumthing in order 
for the Toune to vote at their next meeting, that 


1. Page.56, vol. IV. 


92 


STREET REGULATIONS. 


may be proper for a remedy, to cleare our Toune 
Streete, and so to keep it cleare.” The committee 
performed their duty, and at the next meeting, 27th 
October, 1736, proposed the first street regulations 
which proved effectual. Among them were prohibi¬ 
tions of the storage or deposit of merchandise or 
combustibles, as shingles, clapboards, etc., in the 
Town street, and the appointment of officers with 
sufficient authority to secure the proper care of the 
highway. The assumption of the charge of the 
Town street was an important advance in municipal 
government. It was an abandonment of the early 
reliance upon individual discretion, which had 
deprived the old Plantations of all coercive authority. 
Little more could be expected at that day, for no 
city in the world was then distinguished by a care 
for the cleanliness and safety of its streets. Noth¬ 
ing more was done during many years. Another 
generation passed away before there was a sidewalk, 
much less a pavement. The pavements first laid 
down late in the last century, were of large round 
stones, and the sidewalk, where it was anything but 
a mere bank of earth, was of the same material. 


PAVEMENTS. 


93 


Along the middle of the street ran a long line of 
stones of larger size, which was called the " crown 
of the causeway .” Along this narrow footpath, 
ladies, and people who were more than usually care¬ 
ful of the safety of their clothes, picked their way 
in wet weather. Some attracted notice, by using it 
at all times. The number of vehicles in the Town 
street was not then sufficient to endanger the adven¬ 
turous foot passenger. Yet, during a century and a 
half, the devout reader of Bunyan, as he meditated 
upon sufferings so like his own, could cherish a lively 
sympathy with his brother pilgrim in the " slough of 
Despond .” 1 

During the first sixty years, the original concep¬ 
tion of the Town street remained unexecuted. As 
we have thus far viewed it, it had but one side. In 
modern phrase, it was a shore road . Long after the 
Indian war, the townsman from the North End, who 
came down to a meeting held on a June day, under 

1. The legislature granted a lottery in February, 1761, for the first pave¬ 
ments in Providence. R. I. Col. Records, vol.VI., p. 269. 

When the late Mr. Howland first knew Providence in 1771, the pavements 
extended from the old Crawford house, opposite Crawford street, northward to 
the Quaker Meeting house, and westward to Dorrance street, then called 
“ Muddy Dock.” 


94 


WAREHOUSE LOTS. 


the buttonwood tree, 1 had everywhere a near view of 
the water-side, on his right hand. Half way down 
the hill he came to the falls of the Mooshassuc,—then 
by the river, yet retaining its ancient breadth, at the 
foot of the steep ravine,—next by the cove with its 
clam beds, the hill and marshes of Weybossett,—and 
below them, upon the "great Salt Kiver.” Eager as 
were many of the early Proprietors, to turn their 
estates to some account, few, if any, " warehouse 
lots ” were sold before Philip’s war. These derived 
their names from warehouses which existed only in 
the fond anticipations of the settlers. In 1681, the 
"Towne streete ” is styled, in an act of Assembly, 
" the streete lyeing against the great river in the 
Town of Providence,” no warehouses then intercept¬ 
ing the view. One of the earliest landholders who 
sought to avail himself of their advantages, was 
Pardon Tillinghast, a successor of Williams, in the 
small Society which he had founded. The care of it 
did not interfere with his pursuit of the good things 
of this world. On the 27th of January, 1679-80, 
"On petition of Pardon Tillinghast, a piece of land 


1. Opposite Crawford street. 


THE FIRST WAREHOUSES. 


95 


20 foot square is granted to him for building him a 
store house, with privilege of a wharfe, over against 
his dwelling place.” This was where is now the 
foot of Transit street. He was thus preparing to 
become one of the earliest merchants of the Town. 
During some years, he found few imitators. In 
1698, (January 27, 1697-8,) the lots on the west 
side of the Town street, are termed in the Town 
Meeting Eecords, "lauds by the sea side.” But in 
the same year, there are indications of a new age, 
for an eager competition for warehouse lots enlivened 
the Town Meeting. 1 "Several bills were depending 
for grants of forty foot lots, called Warehouse lots.” 
At this time the " Proprietors,” the successors to 
Williams’s Indian title to the Plantations conducted 
their affairs in open Town Meeting, and as a part of 
the public business. They were alarmed at a pro¬ 
posal to distribute among the freeholders at large, 
lots in the best portion of their estate. As they held 
the control of the Town Meeting, they were able to 
dictate its answer to the petitioners. " Having fully 
considered the matter, and concluded that equality 


1. February 7 , 1697-8. 


96 


THE FIRST WAREHOUSES. 


ought to be propagated, to enclose according to their 
propriety,” (i. e., their proprietorship,) a committee 
was appointed "to consider the matter, and to ripen 
things concerning it.” This was in fact, a determina¬ 
tion by the one hundred proprietors, in view of the 
increasing demand, to make a dividend of the whole 
shore among themselves, whether they intended to 
become traders or otherwise, and to offer none of it 
to public sale. The project was fortunately unsuccess¬ 
ful. But some of the more enterprising of their 
number, obtained grants of warehouse lots, and pro¬ 
ceeded to build upon them. The less influential 
proprietors persisted in their claims to the equality, 
which, in 1697-8, their associates had resolved to be 
their due, but not until 1749 (April 3d) were they 
gratified with gifts of warehouse lots, and thus made 
equal with their more energetic brethren. 

Thus began the early commerce of the Town. 
But it was long before the Plantations saw any vigor¬ 
ous development from this feeble beginning. The 
warehouse lots were subject to so little regulation, 
that in 1704, the Town street had no very definite 
boundary, and the owners set their buildings as they 


EARLY NAVIGATION. 


97 


pleased on its Western side. It was therefore voted 
that "the Town street be four poles wide.” (1704.) 

During the first two generations the voyages of 
the settlers were not longer than between the Town 
street and the villages on the Bay. As the highways 
were mere bridle paths through the woods, the speed¬ 
iest intercourse was by canoes and boats. These lay 
along the shore of the Town street, fastened to 
stakes or iron rings, or stranded on the beach at low 
water. Williams usually went to his trading house 
at Narragansett by sea. On one of his voyages, 
his canoe was overturned, his goods were lost and 
he narrowly escaped with his life. 1 During the 
seventeenth century there was little need of wharves. 
Many years after the settlement, says Governor 
Ward, 2 with all its maritime advantages, Rhode 
Island had no navigation. The legislative commis¬ 
sioners, assembled at Warwick, (November 5, 1658,) 
say, " ourselves are not in a capacity to send out 
shipping of ourselves.” They were, in fact depend¬ 
ent upon Massachusetts, or upon occasional Dutch 


1. Williams to Winthrop, May 9, 1649. 2. R. I. Col. Records, before cited. 


9 


98 


VOYAGE TO NEWPORT. 


traders for nearly all manufactured articles. The 
Massachusetts Puritans would have used their com¬ 
mercial advantage as a means of retaliation. In re¬ 
venge for Rhode Island’s refusal to expel the Quakers , 1 2 
they threatened to discontinue all intercourse, and 
thus to deprive Rhode Island of comfortable sub¬ 
sistence. "We have not,” said the Rhode Island 
legislature, "English coin, but only that which pass- 
eth among these barbarians,” "as corn, cattle, tobacco, 
and the like, to make payments in, which they,” (the 
Massachusetts people,) "will have at their own rate, 
or else not deal with us.”2 

A few years later, Williams was forced to row to 
Newport, in order to dispute with the Quakers, al¬ 
though he needed to reserve all his strength for the 
conflict before him. His antagonists, with their un¬ 
failing instinct for the comforts of both worlds, had 
secured all the available means of conveyance for 


1. Portsmouth, March 13, 1657. 

2. Something of this ill fortune was due to their useless and incessant con¬ 
troversies. At this very time Williams was distracting the Colony with a 
prosecution against Harris, for treason against Oliver Cromwell. These and 
other causes of the ill success of the Plantations, will be considered at large, 
in a future paper. 


WAREHOUSE LOTS. 


99 


themselves. He was more fortunate on his return, 
being able to take passage in a sail boat, then the 
largest Rhode Island vessel. Until the seventeenth 
century was waning to its close, no sloops or 
schooners, save those of Massachusetts and New 
York enlivened the waters of the Bay. The ancient 
townsmen smoked their pipes in the cool of the day, 
in front of their dwelings, on the east side of the 
Town street. From the elevation upon which these 
stood, the householders looked across the vacant 
warehouse lots, down upon their clam-beds and 
canoes, made themselves miserable over the latest 
affronts of Massachusetts or the Indians, discussed 
the secession of Coddington, the rise and fall of the 
English Commonwealth, and the disputes of Wil¬ 
liams, Harris and Gorton, amid the annoyance of 
clouds of mosquitoes which arose from the marshes 
of the west side, and were almost a counterbalance 
for the blessings of religious liberty. Very slowly 
the old farming town awakened to a perception of 
the commercial value of the Bay. At the close of 
the century came the first evidence of progress and 
material improvement. A few " warehouses ” had 


100 


WAREHOUSE LOTS. 


been erected upon lots at the north and south ends 
of the river side. They were not of capacity suffi¬ 
cient to give much liveliness to trade, but they 
alarmed the conservative spirits who now ruled the 
Plantations, with dark forebodings as to the future. 
There had been no provision of ways from the Town 
street to the Salt River. The warehouse lots were 
in immediate contact with each other, and if they 
should be built up and occupied, all except their 
owners, would be shut out from the water-side, and 
from their chief resort for meadow and pasturage— 
the fields of YVeybossett. The demand for ware¬ 
house lots awakened the attention of the Town 
Meeting, and in June, 1704, a preventive was de¬ 
vised for the evils which the new commercial spirit 
threatened to bring upon the Town. A reservation 
was made of all the warehouse lots between the site 
chosen for the ancient Town wharf, (where is now 
Crawford street,) and the house of Thomas Olney, 
near the present Steeple street, and of the corres¬ 
ponding shore on the west side. The vote of the 
Town Meeting, by which all this property was dedi¬ 
cated to the public use, affords a glimpse of life in 
the old agricultural town. 



THE RESERVATION. 


101 


THE RESERVATION. 1 

" At a Toun’s quarter day Meeting, July ye 27th, 
1704, Major Willm Hopkins, Moderator. 

" * * Whereas there is continual pressing upon 

the Toune by people for grants of warehouse lots by 
the salt water side, along the Toune Streete in our 
Toune of Providence the purchasers and proprietors 
now met together on this our Quarter day, having 
taken this matter into consideration, how greatly 
detrimentall it will prove and be unto the Toune if 
so there should be a grant of warehouse lotts, all 
along the salt water by the Toune Streete, by reason 
that people thereby would be so much obstructed of 
Recourse to and from the water side, as they have 
continuall occation for; and more especially from 
the Southern part of Thomas fSeld his home-lot, 
which lieth next to Gideon Crawford’s lott, and so 
up Northward, because there is so constant a passing 
to and from the Toun side to Wayboysett side, cross 
the water, and from Wayboysett side to the Toune 
with cannooes and Boates, Rideing and Carting and 


1. Town Meeting Records, vol. I., pp. 54-55. 


102 


THE RESERVATION. 


Swiming over of cattell, from side to side; and the 
strearae oftentimes running so swift, and many times 
Rough water by Reason of stormy winds, whereby 
neither cannooes, Boates nor cattell swimming, can 
make any certain place to land, but must land where 
they can git on shore, which if the land by the shore 
were appropriated, it would hinder any landing, and 
so damage accrew. Therefore for the preventing of 
what inconveniencyes, otherwise might Ensue, and 
for that a free Recourse may be, cross ye sd water, 
without impediment of landing where the shore is 
made, and for that carts, horses, people and cattell 
may up and doune the banke, from the streete to the 
water and from the water to ye streete have free 
Recourse. Be it Enacted and ordered and it is 
hereby Enacted and ordered by the Purchasers and 
Proprietors aforesaid, That from this day hencefor¬ 
ward there shall not at any time be any land appro¬ 
priated by any person, which lieth upon the side of 
the Salt water by the Toune Streete, from the piece 
of land laid out for a Toune wharfe to be, 1 which is 

1. The home-lot of Thomas Field was on the east side of the Town street, 
opposite to the present Crawford street. The “ Reservation” mentions a pro 
ject, for a second Toun wharf. The design was never carried into effect. 


THE RESERVATION. 


103 


against the Southern part of the sd Thomas Field, 
his said home-lot, There from a bigg Rock up the 
River, northward along the Toune Streete, unto the 
North sideof the now Thomas Olney, Senior, his house 
lott, the which was formerly his father’s dwelling 
place. And that there shall not be any grant made 
at any time, to any person whatsoever, of any ware¬ 
house lott, or parcell of land called by any other de¬ 
nomination, being and being between the aforesaid 
Toune Wharfe Place and the North side of the said 
Thomas Olney, his said lott; but that all the land 
being and being betweene those two places, all along 
betweene the salt water, and the west end of the 
Home lotts which belong unto people, shall be and 
continually remaine in comon for the use and benefit 
of people as aforesaid and that there may be a free 
Recourse also, on Way boy set side, to the salt water 
for passage or what improve else may be made of 
the same ( ?) by people, or for cattell coming to 
the salt water, Travelling on foote, or on horseback, 
carting, fierrieing, &c., Be it further enacted and 
ordered by the Purchasers and Proprietors aforesaid, 
and it is hereby enacted and ordered that all that little 


104 


THE RESERVATION. 


neck of land which may properly be called Way boy- 
sett Neck which hath Nathaniell Waterman, his 
salt marsh and the East End of a Gassy way (cause¬ 
way) on the West and the Salt water on the South 
and South West, and also the Salt water on the East, 
and on the North and Norwest shall perpetually 
lye and be in Comon, and shall not be in any part of 
it appropriated to any person whatsoever, at any 
time. Neither shall there be any grant made thereof, 
nor of any part thereof for warehouse lots, nor por¬ 
tion of land under what denomination soever, unto 
any person or persons, But that the said Neck of 
land and Every part thereof, shall be and Remaine 
continually in Comon, for the use and Benefit of 
people as aforesaid.” 

The reservation was larger than its purpose re¬ 
quired and did not last very long. Probably the 
very assembly which established it did not anticipate 
its continuance, for at the same meeting, (July 27, 
1704,) an attempt was made to revive the project of 
a bridge at Weybossett. The inconvenience of the 
old bridge at Wapwaysett (1662) was soon perceived. 
Some efforts had been made for the establishment of 


WEYBOSSETT POINT. 


105 


another route, both shorter and nearer to the mead¬ 
ows, George Shepard had given lands to the Town 
for this purpose, but in 1675, he petitioned the Town 
Meeting " that his grant might be returned as the 
Town had built no bridge at Weybossett, which is 
done.” Such a work was beyond the reach of the 
capital or engineering skill of those days. From 
the western side of the river, (where Weybosset 
street now begins,) and opposite to the present 
square, a point projected and narrowed the stream. 
It has now disappeared in the widening of the whole 
western shore. Its extremity was where the Wash¬ 
ington Buildings now stand. It was called Weybos¬ 
set point. It gave greater velocity to the current, 
and by directing it toward the Eastern shore, caused 
there a corresponding recession. The tide ebbed 
and flowed up to the Town street, and the earlier 
bridges were much longer than the present. When 
the foundations of the "Franklin House” were laid, 
(1820), the workmen uncovered a rock bearing an 
iron staple and ring, once used for securing canoes 
and boats—the last vestige of the primitive harbour. 
The project of a bridge of such length and of the 


106 


TOWN WHARF. 


requisite stability was somewhat in advance of the 
times. It was, however, foreshadowed long before. 
In the following brief entries may be seen the first 
rude beginning of the present centre of the town : 
2d January, 1681, 1 " Voated by yeTouue, that there 
be a sufficient highway kept for ye Towne’s use, of 
three poles wide from ye Toune Streete to ye water¬ 
side, yt ye Toune may, if they see cause, set up a 
wharfe at ye end of it, in the most convenient place 
that may be.” They did "see cause,” and ninety 
years later, when the Market House was built, the 
Market, Bridge and Town wharf stood side by side. 

At the Town Meeting, 27th July, 1704, the sub¬ 
ject was resumed by some of the principal towns¬ 
men. We may infer from the phraseology of the 
following resolution that the meeting felt great 
doubts of their success : " Whereas, by several per¬ 
sons of this Toune, it was this day proposed to said 
Toune by bill, that the Toune would make a choice 
of two persons to enquire of the inhabitants of 
Providence, and also of other persons elsewhere in 
the country, to see what they will contribute to 


1. Records, p. 58, of that year. See also December 14, 1681. 


WAYBOSSETT BRIDGE. 


107 


the building of a bridge, from the Toune side of the 
Salt water in Providence Toune, beginning against 
the west end of the lott whereon Daniell Abbott, his 
dwelling house standeth, and so across the water, 
unto the hill called Way boy sett, and for that ser¬ 
vice the Toune have nominated Gideon Crawford and 
Joseph Whipple, (if they see cause to accept it,) 
and to make returne unto the Toune of their success 
at the Quarter Day in January next.” Their curios¬ 
ity was soon satisfied. The people would give noth¬ 
ing, and the wharf and " boates ” served some years 
longer . 1 

But a spirit of enterprise was now awakened, and 
the bridge at Weybossett, with its draw, was built, 
and the progress of the town made sure.2 Of the 

1. The following vote of the Town Meeting of this period may give some 

conception of the state of the present centre of the Town,—of the amount of 
communication with Weybossett, and of the obstacles with which it was threat¬ 
ened: “ Thomas Olney, Moderator. * * Whereas James Angell, Philip 

Tillinghast and some others having desired to set up a ware in the Salt River, 
at Weybossett to take fish in. But several persons objecting—if it should be, 
it would impede the passage cross ye said river, and hinder the Recourse up 
and down said River, with boates, and caunooes, and also that a former order in 
our Toune made w r ould not permit of any such allowance. In consideration 
whereof, ye Toune do not see cause to make any such grant.”—Vol. I., p. 60, 
Town Meeting Records, February 11, 1705-6. 

2. A. D. 1711-12. 


108 


THE BRIDGE. 


cost, the architect, and the design of this structure 
we are uninformed. All such details have perished 
with the lost papers of the Town. The first bridge 
was longer, narrower, and less substantial than its 
successors. Such as it was, the townsmen, with the 
notions about taxes then prevailing, found it a bur¬ 
den which they could ill sustain. At the Quarter 
Day, 28th of April, 1717, it was voted to petition 
the Assembly in the Town’s behalf, for assistance out 
of the General Treasury, towards the repairing of 
Weybossett bridge. Happily, the Colony refused 
its aid, and thus gave to the Town a lesson of activ¬ 
ity and self-reliance, which has long ago ceased to 
be required. On the 6th of January, 1719, the 
freemen "ordered that the Justices of this Town 
proceed according to the Statute 22d Henry ye 8th, 
cap. ye 5th, for the repairing of the bridge at Wey¬ 
bossett.” There must have been some dissension, 
and reluctance to contribute, which induced a resort 
to this severe old statute, authorizing impressment 
instead of employing men and cattle by an ordinary 
vote. The Town did not soon again apply to the 
Legislature for its aid, and was all the better for its 
refusal. 


BY-WAYS. 


109 


With the building of Weybossett bridge the need 
of the reservation as a mere landing place was no 
longer felt. The proprietors soon yielded to the in¬ 
creasing demands for warehouse lots, with which the 
more wealthy or ambitious citizens were pressing 
them on every side. Before the middle of the last 
century the whole reservation had passed into private 
ownership, except the remnant known in later days 
as "Market Square.” We may well regret that a 
larger fragment was not preserved for the service 
and ornament of the Town. 

With the sale of the warehouse lots on the west 
side of the Town street there was still no anticipa¬ 
tion of the needs of a commercial town. The earlier 
proprietors had established no by-ways or lanes from 
the Town street to the water side of the future, but 
the warehouse lots were still in immediate contact. 
It was left for the next generation to remedy the in¬ 
convenience at its own cost, and by the light of its 
own experience. Even then, the provision was only 
for the wants of the day, without any forecast of 
the future. Narrow gangways of about twelve feet 

in width, were opened from the Town street to the 
10 


110 


BY-WAYS. 


water side, at intervals of every two lots. These 
ways lay at right angles with the winding Town 
street, and so were not parallel. In some instances 
they widely diverged, in others closely approached 
each other. Thus abundant material for legal con¬ 
troversy was provided by the earlier merchants of 
the last century, for the annoyance of their succes¬ 
sors. The old alleys of the Town street are thus of 
no great antiquity. They originated in the wants of 
the commercial town, when the last century was well 
advanced. Many of them appear in the Proprietors* 
"Plat of Providence Town Street,” of 1746, a few 
are of later date. 1 They recall the humble beginning 
of a foreign trade which was content with thorough¬ 
fares like these. 

The Records give an occasional illustration of the 
wants of the commercial town during its early days. 
During more than eighty years, the Plantations were 
enlivened by no sound of clock or bell. 

How the first generations measured their hours we 
are left to conjecture. When Williams disputed with 
the "Foxians,” at Newport, in 1672, it was agreed that 


1. See Town Meeting Records, 1770. 


SUN-DIALS. 


Ill 


each party should be heard in turn, for a quarter of 
an hour. A difficulty at once arose. No clock was 
available in Newport, and the whole population who 
flocked to the debate, had not a watch at their dis¬ 
posal, 1 "for unless we had Clocks and Watches and 
quarter-Glasses (as in some Ships) it was impossible 
to be exactly punctual: however by Gods help I 
said I would study such Exactness , that I would 
rather omit much I had to say then fail in my prom¬ 
ise to them.” The privation was long endured. The 
people were not in worse plight than those of most 
English villages. Few in those days had watches, 
but the village church tower had very commonly its 
sun dial. By whose benevolence they were set up 
in the Plantations we are not informed. As there is 
no mention of them in the Town Records, they were 
probably due to private liberality. In 1735, George 
Taylor, " the church schoolmaster,” 2 was allowed by 
the Town Meeting the use of the upper story of the 
"County House,” in Kings, now Meeting street. 

1. This fact is worthy of consideration, in determining the genuineness of 
some asserted relics of the founders of Rhode Island. Vide Nar. Club, vol. V., 
pp. 105-106. 

2. He taught during many years (1731—1774) the day school, which was a 
part of the English church mission in Providence. 


112 


SUN-DIALS. 


One of the conditions of his occupancy was, that he 
should keep in repair the sun-dial in the street. In 
view of the habits of school boys in those, and in 
later, days this was an undertaking of no little 
hazard. At this time there were one or two other 
dials in the Town street, before the houses of prom¬ 
inent citizens. A few years later they were sold 
with other brass ware in the shops of the Town 
street. It would be in vain to enquire for them in 
the Cheapside of to-day. With all their inaccura¬ 
cies, they served a useful purpose when clocks were 
few, and watches scarcely known. After 1730, the 
bell of King’s (now St. John’s) Church added some¬ 
thing to the liveliness, it may be to the security of 
the Town. It waited forty years longer for a public 
clock, which was the gift of a liberal citizen. 1 

When, in the early decades of the last century, 
the commercial period began, the growth of the 
Town street went on steadily but slowly, and b} r 
degrees which cannot now be accurately traced. The 
second village which arose after Philip’s war, disap¬ 
peared like its predecessor. Some few specimens of 


l- Joseph Brown, in 1774. 


WAREHOUSES. 


113 


the rebuilding—houses of later date, but fashioned 
like their predecessors, even now recall the Town 
street of the early commercial days. The first 
houses on its east side stood somewhat above its 
level, looking across their narrow grass plats, down 
upon the street and river. When larger dwellings 
succeeded them, the earth was cut away, in many 
places, leaving the houses upon an elevated bank. 
Kemains of this are still visible in many places, 
showing the abrupt ascent of the ancient hill, as at 
the foot of Power street, Waterman street, Meeting 
street, and St. John’s Church-yard. On the east 
side of the way were all the homesteads. The whole 
west side of the Town street was devoted to mercan¬ 
tile purposes, as the title—-the " warehouse lots ” in¬ 
dicated. It long retained its original character. 
Late in the last century trade was still on the west 
side of the street, and the east side was as exclu¬ 
sively occupied by dwellings. It could not have 
been agreeable or always safe, to build upon a slope 
where houses must have been set upon piles, or a 
tide a little higher than usual (in the yet unem¬ 
banked river) might invade the kitchen fires. 


114 


THE FIRST WAREHOUSES. 


Down to the early years of the Providence Gazette 
there were very few shops on the east side of the 
Town street, but there the earliest merchants of the 
Town lived, over against their " warehouses ” and 
vessels. It was not until near the end of the last 
century, that increase of trade required many shops 
on the east side of the way. Many of the oldest 
houses yet standing there, which now have base¬ 
ments with entrances from the sidewalk had none at 
the time of their erection. 

The sales of warehouse lots were not frequent un¬ 
til 1717-18. Twenty years later the Town was 
reaching a prosperity until then unknown. In 1737, 
the sales by the proprietors were numerous, and at 
the end of its first century, the Town street was 
built up and occupied on both sides. One of the 
earliest houses on its west side, exclusively occupied 
as a residence, was that of Gabriel Beruon. It was 
built in 1721, upon the " Spring lot,” nearly opposite 
St. John’s Church. The lots to the northward of it 
had been but recently sold by the proprietors, and 
there was no building as yet between his dwelling 
and the old Baptist Meeting-house, where is now the 
north side of Smith street. 


MILL BRIDGE. 


115 


The spirit of improvement once awakened, there 
was early in the last century, a demand for sites 
near the Town Mill, and for access to the valley of 
the Mooshassuc, and the country beyond. But the 
Proprietors, who held a monopoly of the unsold 
lands, awaited their own time. They determined 
to reserve for themselves all benefits from the 
increase of the Town. Instead of offering for sale 
their lands on the west side to persons who might 
improve them, they, in 1718-19, caused their pro¬ 
perty in Waybossett Neck to be surveyed, and 
divided among themselves—to each owner a lot or 
share, separated by narrow alleys like those of the 
Town street. They were thus in some measure 
responsible for the slowness of the growth of the 
west side. They sold no lots northward of the site 
of Mill bridge until 1718, 1 nor was there a street in 
that direction. There was a bridle-path from the 
Town street to the Mill, sufficient for the conveyance 
of sacks of grain, and a like passageway to the 
river side. On the 19th of June, 1710, the Town 
Meeting ordered a site to be selected for a bridge 


1. See Staples’s Annals, p. 37. 


116 


MILL BRIDGE 


near the Town Mill, but nothing farther was done. 
Everything in the Plantations followed tradition and 
precedent, and either began or ended in controversy. 
The townsmen long doubted whether any extension 
in a north westerly direction were desirable, and what 
was the proper method of making it. The bridge 
was not built until 1733, by which time, we may be¬ 
lieve, all doubts were satisfactorily resolved. The 
highway from the Town street to the bridge over 
Mill river, was laid out and accepted, 13 March, 
A. D. 1738. 1 


1. The slowness with Which the old Town proceeded with measures condu¬ 
cive to its own growth, is illustrated by the building of this road and bridge. 
September 24, 1733, “ Ordered, that a highway be laid out from the Toune 
Streete to the bridge that is lately built over the Mill River.” The committee 
to lay out the new road were Mr. Daniel Abbott, Mr. Joseph Angell, and Mr. 
William Turpin. They probably encountered the usual opposition, or differed 
in their views, and the townsmen were forced to content themselves during 
sometime longer with the old causeway. For on the 3d December, 1737, no 
notice being taken of the previous proceedings, “ a highway is ordered from 
the Toune Streete to the North, or Northwestward, to the Eastern end of the 
bridgg, called Mill bridgg.” A new committee—Nathaniel Jenckes, Joseph 
Brown and John Hawkins, accomplished the work which had been too great 
for their predecessors. This was a prosperous year. The proprietors then 
commenced selling lots in this region, and their deeds at this period are very 
numerous. 

Vol. III., Town Meeting Records, p. 211. 





THE FIRST SHIP BUILDER. 


117 


The appearance of enterprise among the towns¬ 
men soon attracted emigrants of greater value than 
some of the loquacious disputants of former days. 
As we have seen, until the seventeenth century was 
waning to its close, no sloops or schooners, save 
those of Massachusetts or New York, enlivened the 
waters of the bay. Providence had now a ship¬ 
wright of her own, and for him she was indebted 
to the intolerance of Massachusetts. The first of 
the craft here, was Nathaniel Brown. His ancestors 
had been early residents and magistrates of Ply¬ 
mouth. 1 Mr. Brown was long a resident of Reho- 
both, and built many vessels at Bullock’s cove, in 
that town, not far below Field’s point. There he 
owned a considerable estate. With many others, 
he became a partaker in the reaction against Puritan¬ 
ism in the early years of the last century\ and be¬ 
came a convert to the Church of England. He was 
imprisoned at Bristol for refusing to pay a tax for 
the support of the established religion. He left 
Massachusetts, and was welcomed in Providence. 
On the 28th of January, 1711, the Town "granted 
one-half acre on Waybosset Neck, on salt water, to 

1. Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary. 


118 


NATHANIEL BROWN. 


Nathaniel Browne, so long as he shall use it for 
building vessels.” Finding this insufficient, the 
Town Meeting enlarged their grant. On the 8th of 
November, 1711, "granted one half an acre in Way- 
bosset neck, to Nathaniel Brown, so long as he con¬ 
tinues to carry on that business.” He long contin¬ 
ued to "carry it on,” with success. His vessels 
were among the first which sailed from Providence 
for the West Indies and the Spanish Main. 1 His 
house of two stories, with a huge brick chimney at 
its northern end, was one of the best of its day. It 
stood next south of St. John’s Church-yard, and 
was removed, during the summer of 1842. Mr. 
Brown was one of the earliest benefactors of the 
church. He gave to it, out of his landed property, 
(which extended from the Town street to the " High¬ 
way,”) the site upon which it stands. He was also 
a contributor to its funds. The rigors of Massachu¬ 
setts law, by expelling a valuable citizen, gave effi¬ 
cient aid to the commerce of Providence. 2 

1. See Backus’s History of the Baptists, vol. I., p. 538. Backus’s Appendix, 
p. 10, concerning the imprisonment of N. Brown and others. 

2. The business thus introduced was not unprofitable. One of Mr. Brown’s 
successors, “Roger Kinnicut, shipbuilder,” died August 6,1751, leaving a per¬ 
sonal estate of £1,098 18s. 


THE FIRST PHYSICIAN. 


119 


As an indication of increasing wealth, the Planta¬ 
tions had, with the beginning of their commercial 
period, a physician of their own. John Greene, of 
Salem, who had been regularly bred as a surgeon 
and who had practiced in Salisbury, England, came 
to Providence in 1637. He was a valuable acquisi¬ 
tion to the settlers, but he soon left the Plantations, 
and bore a chief part in the establishment of War¬ 
wick. Long after his departure, the townsmen had 
no resource but to send for him in any case requir¬ 
ing medical or surgical aid. When we remember 
the state of medical practice in that age, perhaps the 
want of such counsel was a privation which might 
be borne with patience. But there must have been, 
sometimes, great suffering from the accidents inevit¬ 
able in the clearing of a new country, when the 
kindly aid of nature could give no relief. In such 
cases nothing could be done until a messenger had 
been despatched to Old Warwick, and returned with 
John Greene, the surgeon, after a day lost in the 
journeying of that time. 1 Williams was in the habit 
pf consulting with Governor Winthrop, of Connecti- 


I, Williams to Winthrop, 1660, 


120 


EARLY MEDICAL PRACTICE. 


cut, who was versed in the science of his day, and sent 
to him, as to an intimate friend, for such powders as 
he kept or could prepare. Williams had some medi¬ 
cal books, understood the use of common remedies, 
and was in the habit of prescribing for his neigh¬ 
bours in cases of no extraordinary difficulty. But 
in the case of his young daughter (June 13, 1649,) 
he writes to Governor Winthrop, enquiring, whom 
among all "the Bay physicians,” he should address, 
on her behalf. 1 She was for a considerable time 
under medical treatment in Boston .2 

In the next generation we find little notice of the 
medical profession. There were here, as everywhere, 
in new countries, practitioners who learned by obser¬ 
vation the ordinary symptoms and remedies, and 
whose treatment of disease made up in vigour what 
it lacked in science. It is not greatly to be deplored 
that the hardy constitutions of those days, were left to 
their own resources. The longevity of that age 
equalled that of any of its successors. The Town 
Records preserve no traces of any early physician 

1. Williams to Winthrop, December 10, 1649. 

2. See Williams to Winthrop, 22d June 1645, pp. 143-4. 


DR. BOWEN. 


121 


until 1720. In that year the Town " Voted due Dr. 
John Jones, £1 10s., for the cure of Richard Col¬ 
lins, when he is well .” Of Dr. Jones and his pro¬ 
fessional learning, we know nothing. He was em¬ 
ployed by the Town in caring for its poor, but with 
this disagreeable uncertainty as to his compensation. 

Whoever in the earlier decades of the last century 
desired the best medical or surgical aid, sent to Re- 
hoboth for Dr. Jabez Bowen. As the superior in 
wealth and education, Rehoboth had, long before 
Providence, a physician of its own, whose services 
were in request throughout the surrounding country. 
Dr. Bowen had held prominent political offices in 
Massachusetts, but such was now the growth of the 
Plantations, that he removed thither, and was the 
first regularly educated practitioner in medicine and 
surgery, who permanently resided in the Town. His 
celebrity was widespread. A large landed estate 
preserved in the next generation the memory of his 
professional success. He was the owner of the 
entire property through which now passes the street 
bearing his name. He was long conspicuous in the 
politics of the Town and Colony. His obituary and 
ll 


122 


IMPROVEMENTS. 


epitaph, in the style admired by that generation, 
attest that he held no inconsiderable place in the re¬ 
gard of his contemporaries . 1 

With occasional incidents like these, the commer¬ 
cial town grew up, but by degrees scarcely to be 
perceived. No archives of the Colonial Custom 
house remain, which could give distinctness to the 
view. We read in the Town Records the improve¬ 
ments which were made, and can thence infer the 
wants which gave rise to them. The generation 
which came in with the last century was weary of 
the seclusion of the primitive town—disowned by 
its Puritan neighbours, and not caring to cultivate 
intercourse with them in return. The new towns¬ 
men applied themselves to the opening of highways in 
order to develop their own resources and to avail 
themselves of the wealth of their neighbours. The 


1. Jabez Bowen, (see Providence Gazette,) died August 18th, A. D. 1770, in 
the 74th year of his age. “ He withheld not a healing hand from the indigent 
and necessitous, who were frequent partakers of his bounty.” His house still 
stands in Bowen street, in good preservation, a specimen of the best houses in 
Providence in the earlier part of the last century. It originally stood upon the 
Town street, with a grass plat in its front, and was removed to its present site 
long after his death. 





NEW HIGHWAYS. 


123 


early freeholders had looked only to their own con¬ 
venience as farmers. Their chief regulations of the 
highways had been with a view to prevent the escape 
of cattle, rather than to offer any temptations to 
travellers. Throughout the Dutch period, there had 
been little intercouse between Boston and New York, 
and the highway between them, which lay in Rhode 
Island could only be traversed on horseback. Of the 
discomforts of the journey, and of the Rhode Island 
inns, we have a lively description in Madam Knight’s 
"journey to New York in 1704.” 1 

From some former quotations it may be inferred 
what were the facilities for travel, even in the " com¬ 
pact part of the Town.” The new generation be¬ 
came impatient of this inheritance from their fathers 
and looked about for improvement. They sought it 
first in the highways toward other and more prosper¬ 
ous towns. When the settlements reached the 
"Seven Mile line,” after Philip’s war, the first purchas¬ 
ers soon ascertained the most direct courses through 

1. By the Probate Records of Providence before 1700, vol. I., it appears that 
horse carts and wheel vehicles, and also pillions were common at that day 
among the more wealthy, but they were of little service for journeys over the 
bridle-paths of that time. 


124 


SURVEYORS. 


the proprietors’ woodlands, and made their way 
with little assistance save that of their own axes. 
These forest pathways sufficed until they had wagons 
of their own, and then early in the last century, 
came applications to the Town Meetings from the 
rural freeholders that their bridle-paths might be 
adopted and improved at the public cost. It would 
be difficult at the present day to identify many of 
the localities with long Indian names, which it was 
proposed to connect. The Town street sturdily re¬ 
sisted such impositions, and the country retaliated 
by opposing everything which was for the benefit of 
"Providence Town.” 1 On the 2d June, 1718, it 
was "voted and ordered that there shall be three 
more men added as surveyors, to take care for the 
repairing of the highways, so that there now is six 
men ordered for that service.” This was to satisfy 
the country. Such was a sufficient force for the 
whole of the present county. But the townsmen 
were desirous of something more than this. Provi¬ 
dence and Hartford had been founded during the 
same year. Eighty-six years later there was no road 

1. Town Meeting Records, vol. II., pp. 50—69,1721. 


ROAD TO CONNECTICUT. 


125 


between them, except by the seaside. During the 
first decade of the last century, fear of absorption 
by Connecticut came to an end. As the population 
flowed over the Seven Mile line, a more friendly in¬ 
tercourse with the next colony seemed desirable. 
Until that time all the trade had been with New 
London. This had been, from the first, an active 
commercial town, and possessed a relative importance 
which it has long since lost. There dwelt Governor 
Winthrop, the best friend of Williams, and later, 
Governor Saltonstall, and other leaders in politics 
and trade. Thence came needful supplies of corn 
when the harvest of Providence had failed. On the 
17th of August, 1706, the Town meeting gave or¬ 
ders for a highway towards Plainfield. Probably 
local jealousies interferred. for nothing was done in 
its construction for a long time, and (Feb. 6, 1709- 
10,) the Town ordered another highway towards 
Woodstock. It was to commence with the west end 
of the bridge. 1 The tide then flowed up to the 
Town street, and the bridge was much longer, both 

1. Arnold’s History R. I., vol. II., p. 51, as to the Colony’s interference in 
the matter. • These rival schemes seem to have prevented all action. 


126 


ROAD TO CONNECTICUT. 


on the east and west sides of the stream. Both de¬ 
signs remained for a long time unexecuted. The 
lirst bridge at Wap way sett had been but a local im¬ 
provement, to give access to the meadows of Wey- 
bosset. The second had a larger purpose of devel¬ 
opment and growth, and the way to Plainfield, but 
carried forward the same design. Yet it was too far 
in advance of the time. Intercourse with the north¬ 
ern part of Connecticut was infrequent during the 
last century. In the early part of the present, the 
Rhode Island roads leading to Connecticut, were, 
says Dr. Dwight, 1 among the worst and most diffi¬ 
cult in the whole country. His contemptuous re¬ 
mark that " the principal street on the western side ” 
of Providence "is part of the great road towards 
New London and Hartford,” probably expressed the 
feeling of the Connecticut man of his day. It 
evoked much wrathful comment from the Providence 
Gazette (1810,) but it was nearer to the truth than 
the Doctor’s critics were perhaps aware. There was 
scarcely any population on the west side of the river 
when the high-road to Plainfield was undertaken. 


1. Dwight’s Travels, vol. II., page 29. 


watekman’s maksh. 


127 


The marshy soil and scanty supply of fresh water 
repelled settlers from Weybossett. A generation 
passed away before there were many buildings in 
the locality. Some hopes of a better day were 
cherished in 1753. A plat bearing that date, on file 
in the city clerk’s office, shows something of the 
aspect of the whole region, at that time, and what 
was proposed for its improvement. It contains "a 
street laid across the marsh from the street before Jacob 
Whitman's house to the land belonging to the heirs of 
Nathan Mathewson," that is from Weybossett street 
to Mathewson street. The plat is endorsed " Plat of 
the Highway across Waterman's Marsh." The tide 
had still an entrance to the cove, between the islands 
of the marsh. Later on, in the last century, it ap¬ 
pears from Mr. Samuel Thurber’s description of the 
horrors of a journey over it, that the whole way was 
worthy of its beginning, and that the road to Con¬ 
necticut was the one which the people of Providence 
were least anxious to keep in repair. Thus far, the 
Plainfield road had been only passable by horsemen, 
and not by vehicles. The street represented in the 
plat had an existence only in imagination for about 


128 


THE STREETE NAMED. 


thirteen years longer. The Gazette , of October 
19th, 1763, contains a long scheme of a lottery, 
(after the fashion of those days,) "for rendering 
passable and commodious, a straight and very fine 
street, from the Great bridge into the country.” The 
public are assured that "this new way will be easy 
and convenient for passing to the middle of the 
town, from all the western parts.” "The lottery,” 
says the advertisement, " was granted by the Gen¬ 
eral Assembly, for filling up, and raising the new 
street in Providence, running directly from the 
Great Bridge, up to the westward.” It was sought 
to raise the modest sum of £600. But with all their 
zeal for public improvements, the men of those days 
of ancient simplicity, paid their subscriptions with a 
slowness not wholly unexampled in more recent 
times. 1 

In 1763, the new street had no name. 2 It gained 

1. See advertisements in the Gazette, November 19, 1763: “ All persons in- 
debted to the subscriber for tickets in the Providence Street Lottery, are re¬ 
quired to make immediate payment or they may expect trouble from 

James Olney.” 

Another advertisement in similar terms is subscribed Daniel Tillinghast. 

2. In the advertisements of 1765, it is called only “ the new street,” April 
8, 1765, “ the new street on the west side of the Great Bridge.” 



THE TOWN OF WESTMINSTER. 


1*29 


one a few years later, when the city of Westminster, 
in England, under the influence of Mr. Fox, had 
become famous throughout the empire, as the centre 
of liberal opinions in politics. Its name was bor¬ 
rowed by the land owners of the west side, to ex¬ 
press their own political sympathies. This was but 
a part of a more comprehensive design. In 1769, 
they had conceived such a dread of anticipated op¬ 
pression by a tyrannic majority in the Town street, 
that they projected a new town, to be called West¬ 
minster, which should be free from the despotic rule 
of old Providence. The scheme was defeated by the 
southern counties, who would suffer no increase of 
the influence of the North end of the Colony. This 
was one of the few occasions, when the hostility of 
Newport proved a signal benefit to Providence. 1 
Westminster street was sixty years in the making, 
yet when the late Mr. Howland first knew it (a. d. 
1771) there were but four houses on its southern 
side, and but one on the northern. 

1. Contemporaneous with this agitation was the establishment of a new 
cemetery on the west side, in 1769. It indicates the rivalry, if not hostility, of 
the new quarter, as well as its increase. There had been few if any household 
burying grounds on the West side. Hitherto, when the townsmen of both 


130 


WEYBOSSETT STREET. 


After the road to Plainfield was ordered in 1706, 
public improvements stood still during twenty years. 
At the end of that time, the people of Warwick and 
Narragansett, who at first only occupied the shore, 
were, like those of Providence, now cultivating the 
inland fields from which the Indians had disappeared. 
On the 8th of February, 1725, the Town Council of 
Providence ordered a highway "from Weybossett 
bridge to the Narragansett country so far as War¬ 
wick line.” Both of the west side streets had the 
same beginning at the west end of the bridge. At 
the outset, the new highway encountered an obstacle 
whose removal was an undertaking too great for the 
resources of those days. Weybossett Hill, a per¬ 
pendicular bluff* of considerable size and elevation, 
stood at the parting of the roads to Warwick and to 
Plainfield, just beyond the bridge. On the 17th 
January, 1723-4, " Col. Joseph Whipple, Nicholas 
Power and Richard Waterman were chosen by the 

sections had terminated their controversies with their lives, they had been con¬ 
tent to lie down to their last repose in the common resting place at the North 
end. The increasing west side was now dreaming of a new town of West¬ 
minster, of which a new burying ground was to be a conspicuous ornament. 

Stone’s Memoir of Howland, p. 31. 


WEYBOSSETT HILL. 


131 


Town Meeting a committee to agree with Mr. 
Thomas Staples, upon what terms he may have lib¬ 
erty to dig clay at Waybaussett Hill, for to make 
bricks.” The Town were quite willing that he should 
carry away the entire hill at his own charge. " At a 
Toun’s Quarter Meeting, held at Providence, Janu¬ 
ary ye 27th, Anno Dom. 1723-4,” "Upon a peti¬ 
tion of Mr. Thomas Staples, for liberty to dig clay 
at Waybausett Hill, to make bricks. The which is 
granted, provided he doth not obstruct any high¬ 
way, nor the free libberty of the passage of people 
there, and to proceed according to the directions of 
the committee appointed for the oversite of said 
work.” The hill disappeared long before the mem¬ 
ory of any one lately living. In 1723, it was an 
insuperable obstacle, and the new road to Warwick 
curved around its base. The curve still remains in 
the present Weybosset street. Weybosset street, 
though twenty years later in date than Westminster 
street, was twenty years sooner built up and occu¬ 
pied. There was then but little intercourse with 
Connecticut, but very much with Warwick and Nar- 
ragansett. There, too, was the highway between 


132 


ANGELL STREET. 


Boston and New York. Buildings sprang up—shops 

and inns—along the line of travel, and the road to 

Narrammsett became the earliest rival of the Town 
© 

street. 

Local improvements kept pace with the commercial 
spirit now prevailing in the Town. The road to the 
Upper Ferry was, in 1728, 1 a part of the highway 
between Boston and New York. On the 18th of 
November, the Council ordered " a highway north¬ 
west from narrow passage,” "the Upper Ferry,” now 
"Red Bridge.” This is the eastern end of Angel 1 
street, and the order only gave a change to the di¬ 
rection of an old thoroughfare. On the 26th Janu¬ 
ary, 1739-40, a road of ample breadth, and we 
may hope, with better accommodation " for man and 
horse ” was established to the Upper Ferry. 2 The 
way from Plainfield road to Pawtuxet was laid out 
8 November, 1737. 

During a long period, only such vague instruc- 


1. March, 1728. The road from Killingly to the “ Stated Common,” near 
Providence, was surveyed and returned. So also was the road “ from the 
West side of Wonasquatucket River, Southwardly, to meet with Plainfield 
road.” Town Meeting Records, p. 189. 

2. Its “ location ” has only of late (1872) been changed. 




INFIRMITIES OF COUNCILMEN. 


133 


tions as I have quoted were given to the committee 
who " stated ” a new highway. Land was of small 
value, most of it still belonged to the proprietors, 
and the private owner could receive only benefit by 
what was done. With such indefinite boundaries 
and ample powers, the committees of the Town 
Meeting, or of the Town Council, could serve their 
own, as well as the public interest, and sometimes 
were unable to distinguish accurately between them. 
That even in early days the virtue of public function¬ 
aries was subjected to trials and weaknesses like 
those of a wealthier generation, may seem probable 
after reading the following entry : 18th November, 
1728, " One or two members of ye councill being 
suspected and charged by petition, of being inter¬ 
ested in ye land adjoining where ye highway was 
laid, whereupon this Councill desists of any other, 
or farther proceedings therein.” Let us admire the 
delicacy of the Town Council in withholding the 
names of their delinquent brethren, and trust that it 
was not done in hope of a like charity in return. 

These were the first signs of growth in the old 
Town. They indicated that a new spirit had come 


12 


134 


THE COVE. 


in with a new century, that old debates were ended, 
and that the days of Gregory Dexter and Gorton 
had gone by. Their successors gave their attention 
to material interests. They were anxious that 
Providence should have a market of its own, aud 
should be a competitor with its contemporary towns, 
instead of being dependent upon them for every¬ 
thing but its ordinary harvest. The generation which 
saw these earliest improvements, thus slowly exe¬ 
cuted, saw also many other changes in the aspect of 
the Plantations. The centre was still by the falls of 
the Mooshassuc, but every effort of development and 
expansion was in a southerly and westerly direction. 
The natural scenery remained, as in the days of Wil¬ 
liams and Harris. The cove was deep enough for the 
early navigation, and ityieldedthe same supplies which 
it had afforded eighty years before. Some effort of 
imagination is required, even by those who recall its 
huge banks of oyster shells, its slow moving scows, 
and its sail-boats with their sails flapping in the 
wind or stranded at low water—to picture the old 
North end, at a time when the following vote was 
required or possible : " June 13, 1716, Ordered that 


DISCOURAGEMENTS. 


135 


no seine be set or drawn in Providence River, above 
the Great Bridge ”—on penalty of twenty shillings 
for each offence . 1 

In some future papers it may be well to review 
with greater detail the hindrances to the growth of 
the Plantations. It will be sufficient to observe at 
present that the old townsmen gave no cordial welcome 
to emigrants, and offered them no invitation by the 
establishment of schools, or other means of improve- 
ment. They were satisfied to remain a close corpo¬ 
ration. The descendants of the settlers held fast by 
the " home-lots ” of the Town street, with the tenac¬ 
ity which in that age characterized the owners of 
ancestral property. Few new comers could gain a 
foothold in the Town. There was need of greater 
breadth and variety in its materials. The two reli¬ 
gious societies which were earliest planted still re¬ 
tained their monopoly, and their members gave, as 
yet, no sign of the commercial activity which after¬ 
wards distinguished them. One of the earlier signs 

1. The order yet remains unrevoked. It is honourable to the law-abiding 
spirit of the people, that no one during the last three generations has been 
suspected of any intention to violate it. 


136 


NEW COMERS. 


of an interest in things beyond their own borders 
was the establishment of a parish of the Church of 
England (1722), King’s Church, afterwards St. 
John’s. Some of its members were among the 
earliest merchants of the Town. Soon afterwards, 
even the Puritan doctrines from which the founders 
had fled, found adherents in the Plantations. Among 
the supporters of these opposing systems new citi¬ 
zens appear, and become conspicuous in public 
affairs. A new inducement was offered to a w r ider 
variety of immigrants of activity and talent, to aid 
in the development of the resources so abundant on 
every hand. 

A generation of navigators and traders now grew 
up around the harbour. Of their first experiments, 
whether successes or disappointments, we can say 
little with precision. Custom house records and 
private papers have disappeared, and the Gazette 
had not yet begun. The first vessels, such as 
Nathaniel Brown built (1711-1730), were sloops and 
schooners, the largest of some sixty tons burden. 
These carried the earliest colonial exports, horses, 
timber, barrel slaves, and hoop-poles, to the West 


EARLY NAVIGATION. 


137 


Indies and the Spanish Main, and the rum of native 
distillation, to the Bay of Benin. Upon the fisher¬ 
ies, which were the sources of the earliest wealth of 
Massachusetts, the Plantations did not venture. A 
generation later, the view grows more distinct and 
the enterprise and life of the Town street are before 
us in all their details. During the first half of the 
last century, we can trace them only in the lengthen¬ 
ing rolls of tax-payers, in the ampler Probate inven¬ 
tories, and in the changes which the men of that day 
wrought in the appearance of the Town after it had 
come into their hands . 1 

These are preserved in the public archives, from 
which we may learn something of the force and 
activity of a generation which in its turn has faded 
from our view. 

The coming in of a new age was not without occa¬ 
sional conflicts between old interests and new ones. 
The Proprietors and their descendants could not 

1. With extending foreign intercourse came also the occasional disorders 
before unknown, which are everywhere incident to a transient maritime class. 
On the 27th July, 1727, the Town Meeting, doubtless in order to anticipate the 
wants of an increasing commercial population, ordered the stocks and whipping 
post to be thoroughly repaired. It would seem that these had not lain idle 
before the first strangers and foreigners invaded the Town street. 


138 


BY-WAYS. 


easily divest themselves of the belief that the Town 
was planted for their sole profit, and that its growth 
must be in conformity with their own ideas. They 
had planned the Town street with no provision for 
access to the water side, and it was long before any 
remedy was found for their want of forecast. As 
the " warehouses ” increased in depth and approached 
each other, they again threatened a monopoly of the 
riverside, which the townsmen had foreseen and had 
endeavoured to defeat by the reservation in 1704. 
But this (in 1746) had disappeared. Long before 
that year, the owners of the warehouse lots, and the 
Proprietors, who still retained many of them, per¬ 
ceived that in their eagerness to get, or to keep, pos¬ 
session they had defeated their own object. So 
anxious were they to increase the number of their 
lots, that they had left no highways by which they 
could be approached. As commercial needs in¬ 
creased, they were forced to reconstruct their plat of 
the water side, but they did it with the same want of 
forethought as before. 1 The narrow lanes or alleys 
on the west side of the Town street were, in their 


1. 31 May, 1746, is the date of the new plat. 


BY-WAYS. 


139 


earliest days, inadequate and inconvenient. Such 
as they were, the adjoining owners were only too 
well inclined to claim their exclusive use. They 
even seem to have believed that in constructing ways 
to the water side, they were only making private 
paths, of which they could repossess themselves at 
their pleasure. 1 The freemen at large had a clearer 
foresight of the needs of the Town's commerce than 
had been enjoyed by these early Proprietors. The 
council chosen by the whole body of the townsmen 
applied themselves to counteract the ill effects of the 
narrowness of the proprietors. On the 23d Septem¬ 
ber, 1738, they had appointed a committee, "Col. 
William Hopkins, Charles Tillinghast and Richard 
Waterman, to revise the bounds of the highways, 
from the Town street down to Salt water, and to lay 
out such highways, as may by ye said committee be 
thought proper , and also to lay out a highway or 
ways, at ye east end of ye greate bridge, and other 
places , from Providence Toune Streete, to said 
greate bridge,” etc. There had been frequent col¬ 
lisions between the freeholders and the Proprietors, 


1. See vote of the Proprietors, September 4, 1749. 


140 


NEW STREETS. 


in which, during the first seventy years of the Town, 
the Proprietors had the advantage. They had made 
their sales and boundaries, solely with a view to 
their own convenience, and the townsmen had not 
been sparing of their censures. The freemen now 
outnumbered the hundred Proprietors and were uo 
longer inclined to submit to their dictation. They 
would no longer be content with such narrow lanes 
and alleys as the Proprietors were willing to allow 
them, and they seized this opportunity for redress. 
The new streets of the commercial freemen appear 
in striking contrast with the gangways of the old 
agricultural proprietors. These are among the 
earliest illustrations of the conflict between the old 
and the new age. It is evident from the report of 
the committee in 1738, 1 that there was already an 

1. Abstract of Report: The committee appointed in 1738, with such exten¬ 
sive powers to “ revise ” old highways and to make new ones, was composed of 
William Hopkins, Charles Tillinghast, and Richard Waterman, who were 
among the chief landholders of their time. The improvements adopted, at 
their recommendation, were most valuable, and mark a stage in the develop¬ 
ment of the Town. They were, I., a highway fifty-one feet wide, by Ashton’s 
house to the Salt river. II. Crawford street, a highway thirty-six feet wide, 
between Mr. Crawford’s warehouse and James Mitchell’s house. III. They 
continued Power street to the water side, forty-one feet wide to low water mark. 
IV. They laid out a highway from the Town street, westward, down to the Salt 


NEW STREETS. 


141 


appearance of prosperity which suggested the wis¬ 
dom of more ample provision for the future. To 
the townsmen of that year, we owe what is left of 
Market Square. We can only regret that it was too 
late to preserve more of it. 

The Proprietors did not despair of saving some¬ 
thing out of the wreck of the outgoing age. They 
saw that they must make concessions, and they did 

water river, where the Great Bridge now standeth, that goeth over the river to 
Waybausett, “ taking in the old toun wharfe.” “ Beginning at the North East 
Corner of Col. Abbott’s still-house, and from thence N. 31 degrees West, ad¬ 
joining to the Town Street, 123 feet to a white stone stuck in the ground, being 
also a corner of said Abbott’s land, and from thence to extend westward unto 
the river, holding the breadth of 123 feet, across the river, to the highway on 
the west end of the bridge.” The committee thus saved to this generation the 
remnant of Market Square. V. The committee laid out a highway from the 
Town street, westward to the Salt river, “ oppisate against the homestead land 
of John Angell, Esq. It being the place where they usually landed when” they 
“ Rode or Carted from the other side the river, fifty feet wide, unto the said 
Providence River, at lowe water marke.” There was long a dock at this place. 
It is now filled up and is known as Steeple street. VI. A highway thirty- 
seven feet wide, to the river. On this street the old jail formerly stood. 
VII. “ A highway adjoining to the West side of the Toune Streete, adjoining 
northerly on the Baptist Meeting house, sixty-six feet wide, and so to extend 
westerly between the said Meeting house, and the houseing belonging to 
William Antram, unto the aforesaid Providence river, at Lowe Water Marke.” 

Few committees of the Town have ever done a more valuable daj’s work. 
They seem to have accomplished all this at one assemblage, on the 26th of Sep¬ 
tember, 1738. The record preserves no note of any other meeting. The free¬ 
holders made preparation for the commercial age of the Town, now coming on. 


142 


BY-WAYS. 


it thus : " Sept. 4, 1749, At at a meeting of the Pro¬ 
prietors, Voted that Robert Gibbs, Esq. and Gideon 
Comstock, be a committee in behalf of the Proprie¬ 
tors to request the Town Council of Providence, that 
they cause the highways in said Town, and gang¬ 
ways leading from the Main street westward to the Salt 
River, to be freed from the incumbrances that are 
thereon, and left open to the use of the public; and 
that the committee make return of their proceedings, 
together with what the Town Council shall act 
therein, that the Proprietors may know what is 
proper and needful to be open for the use of the 
public, and that they may take in the rest , and con¬ 
vert it to their own use .” They had not forgotten 
the good old days of the patriarchal association, 
when their grandfathers had dealt with the entire 
purchase at their own pleasure, giving and withhold¬ 
ing, with little regard to the wishes of any freehold¬ 
ers but themselves. It was now too late to resume 
what they had granted, and to correct the original 
errors in their design. 

With such inexperience and dissensions the com¬ 
mercial town began. It had no sufficient access to 


THE FIRST WHARVES. 


143 


the water side, and such alleys as there were fur¬ 
nished ample material for controversy. The owners 
of adjoining estates claimed some of them as private 
property. Then, and long afterwards, they were 
the common depositories of the rubbish of the Town 
street. With increasing trade, deeper warehouses 
were built, and behind them, wharves of timber, be¬ 
neath which, the tide ebbed and flowed. No attempt 
was then made to define the channel of the river, 
which was the common western boundary of them all . 1 

Between the early wharves were long docks or 
slips reaching nearly to the Town street. These 
gained in length, as the business of their owners 
grew larger. Vessels of considerable burden, and 
capable of West India voyages, lay, remote from the 
channel, by the very edge of the Town street. As 
years went on, warehouses of much larger capacity, 
and built upon solid foundations, encroached upon 
the harbour. No owner of lands by the water side 


1. Some of the original buildings on the west side of the Town street were 
set, in part, over the water, and the tide flowed nearly up to the foundations of 
others. The old Baptist Meeting house at Smith street, was built in this way. 
Stone’s life of Howland, p. 29. 


144 


YELLOW FEVER. 


was willing to be outdone by his neighbours, and 
there was no legal restraint upon their competition. 
During three generations, 1 these wharves and docks 
bore the names of their early owners. By the end 
of the last century, those north of Crawford street 
had been filled up and had become highways. To 
the southward of it, many are still represented on 
Daniel Anthony’s map, of 1803. 

The townsmen long endured the consequences of 
their ignorance of sanitary science. The ancient 
wharves were the open sewers of the Town. The 
tide failed to cleanse them, and the summer sun 
caused them to exhale " pestilent vapours ” at low 
water. They were, at all times productive of dis¬ 
ease, the origin of which was ascribed to every cause 
but the true one. During many years the visitation 
was endured, until there came at length, an outbreak 
so signal as to leave no farther pretext for debate. 
During the yellow fever of 1797, which was confined 
to South Main street, in the vicinity of the older 
wharves, a large number of neighbouring residents 
were swept away. Among them were James Arnold, 


1. See Probate Records, and advertisements in the Gazette. 


YELLOW FEVEIl. 


145 


the Town Treasurer, and nearly all his family. The 
report of deaths from this cause alone, was continued 
during great part of the summer and autumn. A 
like, though less extensive, calamity recurred in 
1803, and again in 1805. It prompted no action 
among the slow-moving townsmen of that day. At 
length, the benevolent destructiveness of the "great 
gale” (September, 1815,) compelled the rebuilding 
and reconstruction of the whole water side. The 
present harbour line was then established. 1 The re¬ 
maining docks became solid land, and the present 
"South Water street” obliterated every trace of the 
ancient shore. 

Within these narrow limits was the early com¬ 
merce of the Plantations. It was wholly on the 
eastern side of the river, which continued to be, long 
after the building of the bridge, "the Town side” of 
Providence. 2 The improvements of 1738 were the 
chief additions to the capacity of the Town street. 
The tenacity with which the owners of the " home- 


1. By the Town July and August, and confirmed by the General Assembly 
October, 1815. 

2. See the “ Reservation.*' 

13 


146 


THE WEST SIDE. 


lots ” resisted change enforced a westward and south- 
© 

ward movement. That it had begun appears from 
the direction of the next important highway. On 
the 1st of April, 1745, a road was "ordered,” "north 
from the highway that leads from Providence Town, 
along by Daniel Rutenbridge’s (sic) Mill, over the 
Wonasquatucket River to the road, or a landing in 
some convenient place.” We have seen what sort 
of a " road ” this was toward the west from Provi¬ 
dence. The last mentioned was little better than a 
mere by-path for the use of the bordering land- 
owners. The usual discretion was given to the com¬ 
mittee in the choice of bounds and termini, for the 
value of land in the neighborhood was still but 
trifling. Some account of Rutenberg is preserved 
in the Town Records. He was a German emigrant 
of some education and capacity. His mill, which 
was the precursor of great manufacturing establish¬ 
ments, occupying the entire region, had at first but 
few neighbours, except some small tanneries. He 
died 15th May, 1754, 1 after a life which added some¬ 
thing to the resources of the town. His name was 


l. Probate Records, vol. V. 


BENEFIT STREET. 


147 


long borne by the neighbourhood in which he was a 
proprietor. It is a singular illustration of the re¬ 
sistance of the old Plantations to any division of 
their home-lots, or disturbance of their agricultural 
pursuits, that more than a century from their begin¬ 
ning, the people were widely scattered over the western 
side of the "Salt River,”—that there, the improve¬ 
ments were made by strangers, while the Town 
street was still the only important thoroughfare on 
the East, and the stronghold of the descendants of 
the first settlers. 

A change, however, was at hand. The next in¬ 
novation was revolutionary in its effects. It was 
almost forced upon the reluctant householders who 
lived under the hill. On the 27th October, 1746, a 
petition, 1 signed by Robert Gibbs, Stephen Hopkins, 


1. Petition for the Opening of Benefit Street: “ Whereas the compact part 
of this Town is of late, much increased, which hath also much increased the 
Trade and business therein transacted, by which so great a number of carts, 
chairs, horses and people are necessarily employed that the Street of the said 
Town is not sufficient for the same to be done in, without great inconveniency, 
and whereas also, the House lotts adjoining to said street, are mostly built on, 
or are in the hands of such proprietors as do not care to sell them, by means 
whereof many Gentlemen, tradesmen, and others, whose inclinations would 
settle them here, greatly to the advantage of the said town, are hindered in 


148 


BENEFIT STREET. 


and by some forty others of the more forecasting 
citizens, was presented to the Council. It asked for 
a " street or highway ” eastward of the Town street, 
to be laid out "through the town.” It was to spare 
no man’s home-lot, and imperilled all the household 
graves. The petition gives, with a few lively 
touches, a view of the Town street at that day. 

The first proposal had been in 1743, but the re¬ 
sistance could not then be overcome. Among the 
chief promotors of the scheme were the members of 
the Congregational Society who resided at the North 
end. These, when they had finished what seemed 
to the men of that day, a very imposing edifice, 
(the old Town house of later times,) found that they 
had no access to it, but by going down the Town 

their said designs by reason that there is not houses to be hired, or lotts to be 
bought to build houses on. To remedy all which, we pray that there may be 
another street or highway laid out through said Town, to begin at the lane 
called Power’s lane, and to extend northward, a convenient distance eastward 
from the present street, in the most suitable place, until it comes northward as 
the great gate of Capt. John Whipple, and that your honours appoint a suita¬ 
ble committee. 

“ 27th October, 1746. Signed, Robert Gibbs, 

Daniel Jenckes, 
Step. Hopkins, and 
Many others.” 


BENEFIT STREET. 


149 


street to Hanover (now College) street, and there 
re-ascending the hill. The new structure was almost 
unapproachable in icy weather. The chief merchants 
of the day complained of the insufficiency of the 
Town street, and the want of space for the increas¬ 
ing population. The Town street was then, and long 
afterwards, the public market-place, and the clumsy 
vehicles of those days could, with difficulty, be forced 
through its quagmires. On the second Monday in 
February, 1747j 1 the first order was made for a new 
street, to be called "Back street,” or "Benefit 
street.” The order of the Council was in these 
words: " 15th February, 1747, Whereas there has 
been a petition for some time lain before the Council 
for the laying out of a highway or back street, at 
some convenient distance eastward from the present 
street , from the lane called Power’s lane, so far north¬ 
ward as the grate gate of Capt. John Whipple, in 
order thereto we do order and appoint Jeremiah 
Field, Esq., Capt. Samuel Biles, and Christopher 
Harris a committee to inspect it and to examine the 
place and land, whether it is convenient to lay 


1. Page 50, Town Council Records. 


150 


BENEFIT STREET. 


out said street or way, or not, and to make report to 
the council in some convenient time.” 1 The termini 
first adopted were Power’s lane and Short alley. 
The extensions at either end were afterthoughts. 
(1758). "The grate gate of Capt. John Whipple” 
opened northwardly from his property, into the 
Town street, at the head of Constitution Hill. 

This was the most radical change proposed during 
the last century. It involved an abandonment of 
the original plan and purpose of the agricultural 
Plantations, and an entire reconstruction of the east 
side of the Town. It broke through all the primi¬ 
tive home-lots, and foreshadowed the removal of the 
household graves. The descendants of the settlers 
took the alarm. The Fenners, whose estate looked 
out upon Market Square, threatened violent resist¬ 
ance, if the street were carried across their fields. 
The remembrance of scenes in the early town meet¬ 
ings of the last century, gave some importance to 
the menace. Others made more quiet resistance, by 
interposing every possible delay. The Town judged 
wisely that it was better not to hasten unwelcome 


1. See also pp. 53—59, Council Records. 


BENEFIT STREET. 


151 


changes, but to allow hostility quietly to subside. 
At length, one by one, the opposers yielded and a 
compromise was made. The committee were in¬ 
structed to refrain from disturbing any burial place 
or building,—" avoiding all the buildings and graves 
possible.” Compensation was given, but it was 
small. One of the land owners, Dr. Jabez Bowen, 
the chief surgeon of his day, declined to receive 
any, declaring that his gain was greater than his loss. 
Perhaps our esteem for his magnanimity may suffer 
some abatement when we remember that he was an 
active politician, was often a candidate for the As¬ 
sembly, and was only offered his indemnity in the 
current Colonial bills. Thus, the old town yielded 
to the new. The farmers and yeomen who had been 
the chief inhabitants of the "compact part of the 
Town ” gave place to owners of vessels and wharves. 
The " home-lots ” or Plantations of Providence now 
became "house lots ” in deeds and wills. Space was 
found for a numerous population, near what was to 
be the new centre of trade, the bridge and square. 
But so many were the interests affected, that work 
went slowly on. As a specimen of the tenacious 


152 


BENEFIT STREET. 


conservatism of the old town, this may suffice. 
Benefit street was ** ordered ” in 1747. It could not 
be completed against the efforts of the hostile minority 
until 1751, compensation was voted to some of them 2d 
September, 1755. The plat, according to which the 
street was finally established, was ordered 31 January, 
1756. So late as February, 1761, £300 currency 
were awarded to Benjamin Belknap, for damages 
done him by the new street. It was extended north¬ 
ward to the Town street, 10 June, 1758. But to 
pacify all objectors, and to insure the quiet of the 
neighbourhood, the gate at the north end was ordered 
to be retained. 1 The committee reported their work 
complete on the 19th July, 1758. The street was 
straightened and widened in subsequent years, 2 as 
the old graveyards were one by one removed. The 
curves and angles yet remaining are memorials (in 
some places) of the respect once shown to the 
sacredness of the family burial place. 

1. It lasted many years, and was among the early recollections of the late 
Mr. Dexter Thurber. 

2. The work was prosecuted slowly in those days of economy and thrift. 
See August, 1785, p. 323, Records. See Town Meeting Records, vol. VII., p. 
42, etc., July and August, 1783. Records, 1792, April 15, 1801. 


BENEFIT STREET. 


153 


After all this controversy, the work seems to have 
been too early or too late. It was too late to stay 
the growth of the West end, and too early for the 
wants of the old Town. During twenty-five years 
few houses, and those chiefly at the northern and 
southern extremities, were built upon the new street. 
The Town was now crossing the river, and its 
growth was chiefly on its western and southwestern 
borders. Not until after the Revolution was there a 
strong tendency towards the new Benefit street. The 
men of the last century were not fond of the steep 
hillside. Its descent was uncomfortable and even 
perilous in an icy winter, while as yet there were 
neither street sweepers nor side walks. The burial 
grounds at short intervals, added little to the cheer¬ 
fulness of the view. As in London and in our 
colonial towns, men lived over their shops in the 
great thoroughfares, until commerce had become so 
extensive that merchants required separate houses 
for their dwellings. 

Similar, though less protracted controversies arose 
over most of the early highways. Nearly every one 
of them was the subject of a dispute which needs 


154 


SOUTHWARD MOVEMENTS. 


only to be mentioned, as a struggle of the old times 
against the new, with the result usual in such en¬ 
counters. 

At the middle of the last century, population and 
business were still the largest at the old North end. 
There, among the earliest mechanics, were some of 
the older shipyards, and most of the older traders. 
During the years of Lieut. Gov. Elisha Brown he 
was the successor of the ancient miller, in the owner¬ 
ship and rule of the Town Mill. In his day—the 
long day of " Ward and Hopkins,” the Mill was the 
political centre of the Plantations, and lost none of 
its old celebrity as the place of partizan assemblage 
and debate. 

But the growth of the Town, since its rebuilding 
at the close of Philip’s war, had been in a southerly 
and westerly direction. The movement was slow, 
for the Plantations increased but slowly, and in those 
days men clung to old homesteads, with a tenacity 
now unknown. The building of Weybossett bridge 
indicated the place for a new centre, long before the 
population gathered around it. There was but little 
haste in building at the South end. It was too far 


THE COUNTY HOUSE. 


155 


from the Mill, the shops, and places of assemblage 
of every kind. We have little to mark the change 
which was going forward around the yet unnamed 
square. The old places of trade by the Mill and at 
the North end, still kept their former prestige. In 
June, 1729, the Colony voted to establish a County 
House in each of the three counties i The towns¬ 
men voted to assist in its erection, if they could have 
the choice of its site, and the use of it for their 
Town meetings. The Assembly left the selection 
(February, 1730,) to the freemen of Providence. 
The "up town” and "down town” parties were 
divided in their choice, between land of James Olney, 
in Olney’s lane, a little to the east of the Town 
street, and the Page lot, in Meeting street, where is 
now the City school. The establishment of the 
Court house so far to the southward, was a victory 
of the progressive men of that day. The Town 
gave its directions as to the building. It was called 
the "Colony House,” and was the first public build¬ 
ing except the jail. It was not completed until Oc¬ 
tober, 1731, the April Town Meeting having been 


1. Newport, Providence and King’s. 


156 


THE COURT HOUSE. 

held in the Quaker Meeting-House. It lasted until 
December 24, 1758, when it, and the old "Provi¬ 
dence Library,” which it sheltered, perished by fire. 
It superseded, but only after some years, the inns 
of the " North End,” as the place of legislative 
and judicial business. The present State House in 
the near vicinity, was built within a few years after 
the fire, by the aid of lotteries and paper money. It 
remains, after the lapse of more than a century, as a 
proof that in 1762 the "North end” and the Town 
street had lost little of their original importance. 1 

1. These are the humble dimensions of our first Municipal edifice. Records, 
vol. IV., p. 22, January, 1729, Town’s Quarter Day : “It was ordered that the 
County Court House shall be of wood, forty feet by thirty, and eighteen foot 
stud, between joints, and it is farther ordered that there shall be a chimney or 
two, built in said house from the chamber flower and upwards.” Its cost was 
£664 9s. currency. The new Court house had cost in 1762, £51,556 Os. lid. old 
tenor. So entirely was the east side in possession of the business of the Town 
that the Assembly turned the fact to account for the benefit of the Colony, 
which had been sorely burdened by its architectural efforts. With the frugal¬ 
ity of that day, {Gazette, April 6-13, 1765,) the Sheriff, William Wheaton, by 
order of the legislature, advertised the cellars of the Colony House, to be let 
for stores. After the building of the new Court House in 1763, the Town Meet¬ 
ings were generally held in the hall, which, until recent years occupied the 
entire lower story. This continued until the purchase of the “ Old Town 
House,” in 1795. On an occasion of unusual excitement, (20th June, 1787,) 
the Town Meeting adjourned to “ the Baptist house.” The great lower hall 
of the new Colony House was, during many years, the chief place of exhibi- 


THE HAYWARD 


157 


Another indication that the Town was forsaking: 
its old centre near the Mill, was the establishment of 
the " hay ward,” (z. e., the Market and scales,) by 
the east end of the dock, where the Market house 
noAV stands. In 1758, it had been long fixed there, 
doubtless for the convenience of farmers, from the 
western towns. On the west side there was little 
building or business, except on Weybossett street, 
the old road to Narragansett, until after the Revolu¬ 
tion. Except Weybossett hill, much of the land 


tions and assemblages of every kind, which could not find shelter in the meet¬ 
ing-houses of that day. There were given the first dramatic performances, 
and the earliest scientific lectures. On the 1st of March, 1764, Mr. Johnson 
advertised the delivery of a series of lectures on Electricity, with experiments. 
Among his topics was “ The endeavouring to guard against lightning in the 
manner proposed shown not to be chargeable with presumption, nor in¬ 
consistent with any of the principles of natural or Revealed Religion.” 

With the changes of the times, the hall served for martial exercises. (June 
21, 1777, Gazette), “ Thomas Claggett, late of Newport gives notice that he 
intends opening a school to teach the use of the back sword, at the State House 
in Providence. The terms may be known by applying to said Claggett, at his 
shop, the corner of the parade opposite the Brick Market.” During the fol¬ 
lowing years the great room saw dinners and public balls on days of public 
rejoicing, at which, it may be hoped, the patriotic fervour of the company 
made them forgetful of the defects of the cooking apparatus. The hall lasted 
until the present generation, when it was divided into public offices for the 
Assembly and the Courts. 

See Staples’s Annals, pp. 191-3. 

14 


158 


THU WEST SIDE. 


was still marsh, covered by every spring tide. 
Where is now Dorrance street, was then an open 
channel communicating with the cove. In 1732, 
Gov. Hopkins had counted the houses on both sides 
of the bridge. There were seventy-four on the 
east, and onty twelve on the west, all the rest were 
farm houses. In 17(18, (Jan. 1,) the houses on the 
west side of the river were 102, and the population 
911. 1 Most of these were in Weybossett street. 
The increase of the west side began with the level¬ 
ling of the hill, and the creation of a terra firma 
with its materials. 

As the century went on there were numerous in¬ 
dications of prosperity. The early advertisements 
of the Gazette indicate the scantiness of the popula¬ 
tion of the west side, by the vagueness of the direc¬ 
tions needed in order to find any one in that local¬ 
ity. October 22, 1763, "Daniel Jackson, brass 
founder from Boston informs the public that he hath 
set up his business in Providence, on the west side 
of the Great Bridge near Captain George Jackson’s, 
where he does all sorts of work in the founders’ 


1. Arnold’s History, vol. II., p, 301. 


THE FIRST COMMERCIAL SUCCESS. 159 

trade, after the newest fashions, and in the most curi¬ 
ous and elegant taste.” Most of the few west side 
advertisers thought it needless to be more specific 
as to their places of business. 

The Proprietors’ deeds of lots near the Mill, were 
especially numerous in 1737. In 1746, the "ware¬ 
house lots ” were occupied so far south as Crawford 
street and the " Reservation ” had disappeared. Be¬ 
low "Crawford’s wharf” the buildings stood with 
many and wide intervals between them. But the 
Plantations had attained a prosperity equal to that 
of most colonial towns. They had no rivalry with 
Boston or New York, nor had they, as yet, the mar¬ 
itime enterprise of Newport. But the steps by 
which they had ascended were well taken, and not 
to be retraced. They have not been described in 
contemporary diaries or letters. They may be fol¬ 
lowed in the wills and inventories at the Probate 
office. From these alone we may learn something 
of the private life of the men who once trod these 
well-worn highways. They could have felt little of 
the sensitiveness with which the present generation 
shrinks from the publication of minute details of 


160 


NEW HOUSES. 


household arrangements and supplies. Everything 
pertaining to the estate of a departed townsman was 
spread upon the public records, and contributed to 
the topics of the day. Little farther information 
can be desired, as to the early lack of creature com¬ 
forts, and the gradual progress towards their attain¬ 
ment. 

Having viewed the houses which overlooked the 
Town street during the years of the Indian war, we 
may from the same records obtain the material for a 
survey of the dwellings which the first commercial 
generations built upon their old highway, and of 
the beginnings of wealth within. 

Before the Indian war, everything had been stag¬ 
nant and stationary. A dark cloud hung over the 
future, and there was neither enterprise nor wealth, 
nor immigration. The houses of a story and a half, 
and the furniture, equally rude and solid, were fash¬ 
ioned by the same hands. The same artificers con¬ 
structed houses, boats, and tables, and, when these 
were needed no longer,—the coffins in which they 
bore their neighbours to their last resting places in 
the family orchards. Besides their homesteads they 


NEW HOUSES. 


161 


left little beside farming tools and cattle. There 
was at best, only comfort, and scarcely that, accord¬ 
ing to the standard of the next generation. But as 
the maritime period of the town went on, the earli¬ 
est profits found employment in the erection of more 
spacious abodes. The townsmen who were in com¬ 
fortable circumstances, built no more of the primi¬ 
tive dwellings of a story and a half. There had 
been a very few houses of two stories, at the begin¬ 
ning of the last century. By the year 1720, they 
were quite common, and the earliest of those now 
remaining are of that time. This second class of 
houses in the Town street, had an upper story sur¬ 
mounted by broad and heavy projecting eaves, very 
often the gables were turned towards the street. 
Some are yet standing. The houses of Dr. Vande- 
light, in South Main street, and of Dr. Jabez Bowen, 
in Bowen street, bear witness to the solid construc¬ 
tion of those days. Many others of the same class 
have but recently disappeared. Such were the old 
" Arnold house,” opposite the foot of Waterman 
street, which bore in iron figures upon its chimney, 
the date of 1726. The wooden block opposite St. 


162 


LAST CENTURY HOUSES. 


John’s churchyard, was of 1720. The old "Town 
House,” (1723,) was the most conspicuous building 
of that day, a faithful representation of it is, fortu¬ 
nately, preserved. 1 A few years later, (1740-1750,) 
still larger houses of the same style, with the whole 
gable projecting a foot or more beyond the wall, 
were the residences of the more prosperous towns¬ 
men. These buildings were all upon the Town 
street. Their style and fashion had gone b} r before 
the " West side ” began to be built up. Of this class 
were the old Fenner and Abbott houses, which 
looked down upon Market square. The last is 
within the memory of most of us. From its bal¬ 
cony, King George lid. was proclaimed, and the 
Declaration of Independence read. The Fenner 
house, next to the nortlrward of it, was of smaller 
size, but of similar design. The house owned by 
the late Moses Brown—the oldest part of which was 
built by William Crawford, (died 1720,) and the 
newer, by John Meritt, (about twenty years later,) 
was the best specimen of a dwelling of that period. 
A well preserved example of the less costly houses 

1. The property of Mr. H. C. Whitaker. 


HOUSEHOLD GOODS. 


163 


is that of Governor Stephen Hopkins, in "Bank 
lane,” which originally stood at its foot, but now, 
since 1808, half way between South Main and Ben¬ 
efit streets. Although so many of these old struc¬ 
tures have disappeared, enough of them yet remain, 
to enable us to reconstruct the Town street of the 
early shipowners and merchants of the Plantations. 

The increase in the number and value of their 
household goods kept pace with the improvement in 
their habitations. Many of the most prominent set¬ 
tlers, like Williams, had not been bred to "the plough 
or the oar,” but they became sufficiently practised in 
the use of different implements, to do their own 
mechanical work. Thomas Olney, the successor of 
Williams, in his religious society, had only a bible, 
and two or three controversial works. He had a 
workshop with tools, among which was a smith’s 
vise. William Harris, one of the chief landholders 
of his day, had many more books but no luxuries, 
and only "puter” vessels. There was among his 
effects no article of silver. The fugitives from the 
burning of the town had carried away much of its 
early wealth. The cattle which were left behind and 


164 


HOUSEHOLD GOODS. 


which were tortured and killed by the Indians, were 
in a few years replaced. But the Plantations had 
received a check. There was no money, and no 
ability to set up more comfortable household estab¬ 
lishments, until the early years of the last century. 

So exact and minute were the probate inventories 
that the things not mentioned in them are worthy of 
remark. Almost every manufactured article came 
from over the sea—could not be readily replaced— 
and had a value such as has been long unknown. 
The lists are so thorough and complete as to include 
all articles of feminine attire, as also a pound or two 
of tallow candles, an iron buckle, a handful of nails, 
or an old iron candlestick. Nathaniel Mo wry, (died 
March 24, 1717,) left "a stone jugg, with some rum 
in it,” which the testator was not spared to enjoy. 
During many years, they whose frugality or whose 
narrow means, or contempt for the vanities of the 
world, refused the imported silver buckles, made fast 
their habiliments with " kneestraps.” Pairs of these 
leathern kneestraps are duly inventoried and ap¬ 
praised among their assets. Nothing is wanting to 


RAZORS. 


165 


a view of parlour, kitchen, and bed chamber, in an 
interior of those days . 1 

From the last decades of the seventeenth century, 
there is a perceptible increase in the amount and 
variety of personal estates. As houses grew larger, 
the furniture was more abundant and of better qual¬ 
ity. Years before, there had been many slaves— 
both negroes and Indians—in Newport and Narra- 
gansett, but only in the early years of the last cen¬ 
tury, did the household establishments of the Plan¬ 
tations become equal to the burden. They now 
indicate a greater ease of living, among the more 
prosperous townsmen. Some luxuries, before un¬ 
known, begin to appear among their household 

1. During the seventeenth century but one razor appears in the Probate 
inventories. Stephen Harding, (died 31 May, 1680,) had the first which came 
under the jurisdiction of the Court of Probate. The fashion of wearing the 
beard was well-nigh universal, and was discontinued in New England soon 
after it ceased in London. Leverett, Deputy Governor, 1671-72, Governor 
1673-78, is the first Governor of Massachusetts who is painted without a beard. It 
was common to men of all religious opinions, which they distinguished by its 
more or less “ formal cut.” This fact has not been duly remembered in latter days. 
There was, we may be certain, no razor among Williams’s household effects. 
He would have regarded the time wasted in shaving, as a fearful item in his 
final account. Yet he has been represented in the portrait statue which the 
State has erected in his honour, in a guise which he would have thought appro¬ 
priate only to a “ priest all shaven and shorn.” Razors did not come into com¬ 
mon use in the Plantations, until the end of the seventeenth century. 


166 


INCREASING WEALTH. 


effects. Every article of silver, however inconsider¬ 
able, receives honourable mention. Thus, James 
Rogers had, it appears by his inventory of 13 April, 
1719, silver shoe buckles, and "one pair of silver 
clasps to his pocketbook.” Many had one or more 
silver spoons, and buckles. Here and there a silver 
cup was among the family treasures. 

One of the earliest examples of commercial suc¬ 
cess, was that of Gideon Crawford, who lived in 
Providence from 1685, until his death in 1707. He 
sent some of the first vessels from this port to the 
West Indies, and left what was for those days, an 
ample estate, including what was then the large 
amount of £15 in plate. His widow, Mrs. Freelove 
Crawford, (daughter of Arthur Fenner,) continued his 
mercantile adventures several years after his death. 
She appears to have displayed much energy of char¬ 
acter and largely augmented the family estate. Her 
real and personal wealth is duly chronicled in the 
Probate Records, vol. I. Among her adornments 
"and other effects,” are enumerated "63 Bookes,” ' 
a fur muff with case, a scarlet cloak, a gold-headed 
cane, high-heeled shoes, an arm chair, fourteen 




WEST INDIA VOYAGES. 


167 


chairs, six of them covered with leather, four pic¬ 
tures, side saddle, silver tankard and salt cellars, 2 
silver porringers and seven spoons, 2 brass fire 
doggs, one wine cupp of silver, and 1 rum cupp, 
Gold £12, besides several sloops and schooners. A 
decided advance from the days of her grandfather, 
William Harris. She died 1712. Her son, William 
Crawford, was also a successful merchant, besides 
holding several offices of the town and colony. His 
inventory, (Aug. 9, 1720,) was the largest which 
had yet been exhibited to the Court of Probate. It 
amounted to £3,551 19s. 1 d. 

Pardon Tillinghast, 1 the successor of Thomas 
Olney, left a good estate for his day. He had no 
workshop, a few more books, and one silver spoon. 

A few years later, larger schooners and sloops, 
and shares or parts of them, had become frequent 
investments. Among the proceeds of their voyages 
were occasional logs of mahogany, which were 
wrought into massive furniture, now highly prized 
among family relics—and pieces of Spanish silk and 
linen, as presents for wives and sweethearts. The 


J. Tillinghast died 19 January, 1717. 


168 


EARLIEST LUXURIES. 


numerous wills of townsmen dying in the West 
Indies and on the Spanish Main, sufficiently indicate 
the direction of the new spirit of enterprise. Lega¬ 
cies—too often of old tenor bills—but sometimes of 
Dutch guilders, and good Spanish dollars, afforded 
consolation to the mourners. Increasing wealth 
brought with it increase of comforts. In 1716-20, 
many of the citizens had several " bookes” beside 
their family Bibles. English periwigs ornamented 
the Town street, gold and silver-headed canes and 
gold and silver buckles were no longer marks of 
distinction. Foreign trade brought in some amount 
of Spanish and Dutch gold and silver coin. Table 
linen was spread upon the boards at which the an¬ 
cient yeomen had been content without it. Looking 
glasses now first ministered to the gratification of 
their households. 1 The huge chimneys, well heaped 
with logs of oak and chestnut, were now ornamented 
with andirons and fire-dogs of brass or iron. More 
liberal supply of chairs superseded the discomfort 
of the ancient settles. Furniture for table and 

1. Some of these could have been of no great size, being valued only at 
four shillings. 




UTENSILS AND TRADES. 


169 


kitchen showed a like improvement in creature com¬ 
forts, by the more general diffusion of ladles, choco¬ 
late pots, skewers, dripping pans, skimmers, sieves 
and every variety of pots and pans, spoons, salt 
cellars, pepper boxes, and nutmeg graters. The 
appraisers noted with severe accuracy skillets, 
spiders, gridirons and stewpans. But the most 
striking evidence of progress is afforded by the in¬ 
creasing number and variety of tools for mechanical 
operations which had been unknown here in the days 
of Williams and Harris. There were now plasterers, 
stone-cutters, masons and joiners, ship and house- 
wrights. As the century went on, household manu¬ 
factures became more frequent, and conversant with 
new materials. Hand-looms, (variously written by 
executors to whom the art was new,) " loombs ” or 
" lumbs,” were not infrequent in 1740. William 
Field, 1 left among his assets, one pair of cards and 
five pounds of raw cotton. The number of candle- 
moulds, (now a common household utensil,) proves 
that the day of the old " pitch lights ” had gone by. 

By the middle of the last century comfort had 


15 


1. Died 1742. 


170 


CULINARY UTENSILS. 


made still farther advances. Wanning pans and 
some other implements which, fifty years before, had 
belonged only to the few, could now be found in all 
well-provided households. Tinware, unknown to 
the earlier generations, was now common even in 
the country parts of the Plantations. Plates, drink¬ 
ing cups, and other utensils of " puter,” were in 
common use among the less wealthy householders, 
until late in the last centuiy. They did not break, 
and were more cleanly than the old wooden trenchers. 
But pewter became, in its turn, more expensive, and 
was superseded by earthenware, and it, in its turn, 
by glass. 

Clocks were quite common, but silver watches 
were not frequent enough to displace sun-dials, until 
half of the century had gone by. Both parlour and 
kitchen furniture improved in variety and amount. 
In the fourth decade of the last century, chocolate 
and coffee mills, tea-pots and canisters, chafing 
dishes, skimmers, ladles, sieves, chopping-knives and 
skewers, lignum vitce mortars and pestles, cheese 
toasters, and pudding dishes, gave evidence of bet¬ 
ter provision for festival days, than could be made 




household furniture. 


171 


in the time described by Chad Brown. The dining 
room partook in the improvement. On many floors 
were carpets of domestic manufacture. On the 
walls were looking glasses, and sometimes maps and 
engravings. Chairs were now universal, even on 
the west of the "seven mile line.” Soup plates, 
decanters and wine glasses 1 were upon the tables of 
the more wealthy, at the middle period of the cen¬ 
tury. Bird cages, valued at four shillings, and flower 
pots, with occasional instruments of music, as flutes, 
were indications of improvement in taste. Plate 
may have been accounted an investment amid the 
fluctuations and uncertainties of the paper currency, 
for the early ship-owners and merchants had no lack 
of silver tankards, cups, porringers and spoons . 2 

1. The first wine glasses in the Town belonged to John Crawford, (died 17 
March, 1718-19,) and to Gabriel Bernon, (died 1735-36, 1st February). John 
Crawford had divers “ spoones,” porringers, “cuppes, ” pepper boxes and graters 
of silver, valued at 30 pounds, and many luxuries for that day. He owned sev¬ 
eral vessels, and merchandize valued at £1,614 2s. lid. besides real property. 

2. In the days of colonial bills, when all sorts of foreign coins were occasion¬ 
ally offered and there were no bankers or other experts to certify their value, 
small “ money scales and weights ” were common articles of shop and house¬ 
hold furniture, (1730—1705). In one of the earliest numbers of the Providence 
Gazette “ small scales and weights ” are advertised for sale by the Publishers, 
at the printing office, among other articles in their lists of “ stationery,” 
November, 1763. 


172 


LUXURIES. 


With this provision for comfort, to be enjoyed 
within, there was some regard to ornaments for dis¬ 
play in the Town street. A testator in 1742, left, 
with better things, "a gold ring, with five sparks,” 
which the prudent executor notes, "are supposed to 
be diamonds,” 1 and values at £20. The more sub¬ 
stantial citizens had gold-headed canes, and, some 
of them, "carnelian seals set in gold.” By this time 
gold buttons and silver watches were not infrequent. 
In 1745, Providence had, through the Blackstone 
valley, much of the trade of central Massachusetts, 
had the same tropical luxuries as at the present day, 
and could indulge in some Loudon finery. The shop 
of Arnold Coddingtou, 2 in the Town street, was 
amply supplied with broadcloths, "scarlet, 'blew,’ 
dove colour and green,” callimanco and shalloons, 
camlet, fustians, crape and buckram, also stockings 
of cotton and cambric, silk gloves, handkerchiefs, 
and stockings, with clocks, linen and silk damask. 
His feminine customers were tempted by the display 
of ribands of gorgeous colours, gold and silver, 

1. Vol. IV., Probate Records, p. 52, inventory of W. Walker, 14 Oct., 1742. 

2. He died 12 October, 1742. 



FINERY. 


173 


white and crimson, green and silver. "Girls’ fans,” 
of black gauze, and many obsolete adornments, 
whose very names are unintelligible to the shopkeep¬ 
ers of this generation, lent enchantment to the view. 
Husbands and fathers were not neglected, for them 
Coddington had buckles of gold and silver for shoes 
and small clothes, as well as girdle buckles, mourn¬ 
ing buckles, and buckles for all the other emergen¬ 
cies of human life. We are left to conjecture the 
exclamations of the thrifty Proprietors and free¬ 
holders of those days, in their interviews with the 
purchasers of these vanities, in the privacy of their 
own homes. To give sufficient variety to his mer¬ 
chandize—that none might go away disappointed— 
Coddington offered also razors, tooth brushes and 
mousetraps, "sliding perspective glasses,” hardware, 
tools and nails. This inventory, the longest which 
had as yet appeared, fills eleven closely written folio 
pages. Its total valuation is £3,640 Os. 3 id. It 
offers a strange contrast to the lists of houshold 
goods of fifty years gone by. Whoso peruses it 
will gain much valuable learning, as to the feminine 
adornments of that day. Arnold Coddington was 


174 


PERSONAL ESTATE. 


of the family of Governor Coddington, of Newport. 
Such a departure from his ways, by his posterity, 
might almost have disquieted the slumbers of their 
Quaker ancestor. The unhappy dealer in luxuries 
was somewhat in advance of his time, for he appears 
to have died insolvent. 

In the value of his goods, Coddington was only 
rivalled by William Turpin. 1 He dealt in more 
substantial wares, as saddles, etc. His property in 
his shop alone, was valued at £3,255 18s. 8c?. 2 

Nicholas Power, died in Surinam, 27 February, 
1743, leaving a similar variety of effects, which 
were valued at £1,042 09s. 6c?. James Olney, 
died 6 October, 1744. His inn furniture and other 
assets amounted to £987 15s. Those of Stephen 
Dexter, were of the amount of £638, of William 
Watson £2,498, of John Savery, (died 4 January, 
1752,) £1,911 12s. Among this merchandize might 
be found looking glasses, (some of £30 cost,) Span¬ 
ish silk stockings, with clocks, Spanish and Scotch 

1. Died March, 1743. 

2. William Turpin sold no luxuries, but the inventory of his shop or ware¬ 
house shows iron, brass and wooden ware, tools, nails, paper, cloth, linen and 
woollen goods, “ puter,” groceries, and produce, 6 folio pages. 


PERSONAL ESTATE. 175 

linens, and many other things of like value and 
necessity. At this time, (1740-1750,) Dutch and 
Spanish gold coins were no infrequent spectacle in the 
Town street, as the trade with Surinam increased, 
and doubtless excited the envy of those who hoped 
to find in their dealings in paper money a substitute 
for honourable commerce. 

Many persons in the middle part of the century, 
left from one to two thousand pounds in personal 
property, besides their real estates. Inventories of 
from £3,000 to £5,000 were not infrequent. The 
embarrassments of business by colonial legislation 
are indicated by Moses Brown in his inventory of 
the property of his Uncle Obadiah, 26 October, 
1762. His goods, enumerated, article by article, 
are valued at £93,220 16s. 1 \d. old tenor, equal to 
£3,995 3s. 6£c?. in " lawful money.” 

By this middle period of the last century the 
descendants of the settlers, had all the chief culinary 
utensils and materials known to the present day. 
The ancient iron pot alone furnished forth the tables, 
on the feast days, few and far between—of the years 
of Williams and Harris. It doubtless served many 


176 


COOKERY. 


purposes, of baking, stewing and boiling, but any 
addition of sauce or flavour, seems to have been then 
unknown. 

The people who had enjoyed this first experience 
of magnificent attire, were in no mood to sit down 
to entertainment like this. Could we reconstruct the 
kitchen of that day, we should find little wanting of 
fish or fowl, or of the culinary apparatus or material 
of the present time. The skill of housewives, become 
learned in every variety of preserve and pastry, 
meats and fowls, was now supplemented by the aid 
of negroes, enslaved or free. These, in a time when 
economy of material was of less account than at 
present, found ample scope for their peculiar facul¬ 
ties in the plenty of the old Rhode Island kitchens. 

With the increase of the town, many emancipated 
slaves became partakers of the general prosperity, 
and left behind them effects sufficient to attract the 
attention of the Town Council. Thus, among a 
large number, 1 "Jack Harris, a negro man, so 
called,” (died 21 December, 1745,) left £145 11s. 5 d. 
much of it, unhappily, in colonial bills. John Read, 

1. Vol. IV. p. 189, Probate Records. 


THE FIRST OYSTER HOUSE. 


177 


"free negro,” (died 21 December, 1753,) left £100, 
and so did many others. Some had received their 
freedom, and bequests from dying masters, which 
remain on record as evidence that they possessed 
rights which white men " felt bound to respect.” 1 

The most conspicuous among them during the last 
century, was Emanuel, commonly called Manna, 
Bernoon, an emancipated slave of Gabriel Bernon. 
Turning to account the hereditary talent of his race, 
he established here the first oyster house of which 
there is any record. It was in the Town street, 
near the site of the old Custom House of a later 
day. To satisfy the cravings of a thirsty generation, 
he provided twenty-three drinking glasses, four 
" juggs,” twenty-eight glass bottles, two bowls, with 
pewter plates, spoons and cooking apparatus in pro¬ 
portion. The knowledge which he had acquired 
during his former service, ensured his prosperity. 
He was the first of a long line of such ministers to 
the public wants. Dying in 1769, he left a house 
and lot in Stampers street, (where his wife carried 

1. See Probate Records, vol. VI., Moses Brown emancipated six or seven. 
See Eve Bernon’s will, vol. VI. 


178 


LAST CENTURY PHYSICIANS. 


on the trade of washing,) and personal estate val¬ 
ued at £539 10s. His gravestone in the North Bury¬ 
ing ground is as substantial a memorial as those of 
most of the wealthier white men of his day. 

To guard against the ill effects of the abundant 
feasting and drinking of that generation, three phy- 
sicians of ability and note, Drs. Jabez Bowen, 
Robert Gibbs, (died June 29, 1769,) and David 
Vandelight, prescribed, from a formidable list of 
drugs. Some of their medicaments, (as the Bezoar 
stone,) have happily disappeared from the pharma¬ 
copoeias of modern days. 1 

Dr. Gibbs 2 was of Boston, a man of education, 
and rendered useful service by his activity in public 

1. People had not yet lost faith in its magical properties. It was the “ mad- 
stone ” of former days. Phillips's New World of Words. Bezoar or Beazoar, 
“ a stone bred in a certain beast called Bazar, which, by feeding upon whole¬ 
some herbs, growing in the Indies is very cordial, and conduceth in all vene- 
nate and contagious diseases.” Phillips's Neiv World of Words, 6th ed., 1706, 
“ a precious stone of great virtue against poison and the plague, bred in the 
stomach of a creature like a wild goat.” Bailey’s Dictionary, 1736, “ a stone 
of excellent virtue in medicine, of the bigness of an acorn, found in the 
stomach or belly of sundry animals.” Its virtues have not saved it from utter 
neglect. Let us hope that it, or at least their faith in it, was of some service 
to patients suffering in spirit from the plague of colonial paper money. 

2. The list of his drugs is valued at £1,470 12s. His house, lately owned by 
Mr. E. W. Howard, was one of the best in the Town street. 


DR. VANDELIGHT. 


179 


affairs. Dr. Vandelight was a graduate of Leyden, 
and was bred to his profession in the most celebrated 
school in Holland. He was a brother-in-law of 
Nicholas, John and Moses Brown, and seems to have 
been attracted to Providence by mercantile induce¬ 
ments. He was skilled in the ohemistry of his day, 
and introduced here the Dutch method of separating 
spermaceti from its oil, which brought much wealth 
to the Plantations. He gave the first practical in¬ 
struction in anatomy which was imparted in the 
Plantations. The duties of the apothecary and of 
the physician were then, and long afterwards, united 
in the same hands. With his commercial employ¬ 
ments they ensured him a fortune ample for his day. 
After his decease, (14 February, 1755,) Vandelight’s 
inventory of drugs and instruments alone fills five 
folio pages. Their value was £4,375 14s. Ad. Like 
his medical brethren, he lived in one of the best 
houses of his day. It yet stands in the Town street, 
(between College and Hopkins streets,) a well pre¬ 
served relic of the last century. It has the heavy 
projecting gables of that time, and in size and solid¬ 
ity of construction, it had few superiors in the Town. 


180 


ANCIENT INNS. 


A review of this period, however rapid, would be 
incomplete without some notice of the ancient inns 
of the Plantations. From their early days they had 
been the scenes as well as the subjects of many 
political controversies. They were not, for a century, 
superseded by any legislative or municipal edifices, 
and were the chief places of resort in times of public 
excitement, or of social converse and relaxation. 

From the earliest times, the tendency to strong 
drink bade defiance to the ingenuity of the Town 
Meeting. The evil of an indulgence in "strong 
waters ” is no discovery of recent times. The con¬ 
temporaries of Williams were well furnished with 
biblical texts, and their experience was not unlike 
our own. They had even more reason for alarm, 
for beside the evil examples of Avhite men, the 
"Indian drunkenness” endangered the whole com¬ 
munity . 1 

Every expedient known to our day was fully tried 
during the first century of the Town. It was quite 
as difficult as at present to restrain this unalterable 
tendency of human nature. The Plantations were 

1. This will be more fully treated in another paper. 


LANDLORDS. 


181 


content at last with providing inns for travellers and 
townsmen, and landlords whose characters gave some 
guaranty for the quietness of their houses, and the 
goodness of their liquor. 

As the Assembly, the Courts, Town Meeting and 
Council always sat in taverns which were upon the 
chief highway, the landlord was at the centre of in¬ 
telligence, and often became the oracle of his neigh¬ 
bourhood. He was sometimes chief of the local 
militia, and representative in the assembly, and en¬ 
joyed the prominence which in Massachusetts be¬ 
longed to the Puritan minister. As the Assembly 
had among its members many of his brethren of the 
same vocation, he was well assured of their sympa¬ 
thy in his claims and charges. He knew, also, that 
they were perfectly competent to deal with all ques¬ 
tions of bad liquor, and short measures without pre¬ 
vious reference to a select committee. He had 
every reason to be careful that there should be no 
failure of creature comforts at these solemn political 
assemblages. 

The inn was not one of the primitive institutions 
of the Town. As we have observed, there was, 


16 


182 


ENTERTAINMENT OF STRANGERS. 


during many years, no intercourse between Boston 
and New York. Long after the Dutch period, trav¬ 
ellers were so few that it was scarcely worth while 
to enquire whether they were pleased with their en¬ 
tertainment. During two generations, all strangers 
coming to Providence, were received in private 
houses,—the more important, or those entrusted 
with public business—by Williams himself, or by 
Thomas Olney, the Town Clerk. After inns were 
duly licensed, (in 1655,) the reception of wayfarers 
was scarcely their chief employment. 1 The inn was 
a centre of political intelligence, the drinking house 
and club room of the neighborhood, as well as the 
place of public business. 2 Some of the earlier land- 


1. “ 1654, September ye first. * * It is ordered that each Toune doe forth¬ 
with apoynt or license one or two houses for ye entertainment of strangers 
and to encourage such as shall undertake to keepe such houses. And that all 
others that are not licensed do not retaile either wine, beere or strong liquors, 
upon ye penalty of five poundes. And ye former lawes for ale houses and 
liquers be repealed.” On the 25th of May, 1655, Roger Mowry and Richard 
Pray were appointed to keep said houses in the Town of Providence. But as 
there is no notice of their acceptance, or of their appearing to give the required 
security, it is doubtful if they assumed the office at that time. 

2. Throughout the English colonies the inn or tavern was called the “ ordin¬ 
ary.” “ Taverns or ordinaries,” in John Clarke’s “ Ill News from New England.” 
On September 26, 1709, the Town Meeting elected representatives to the “ Gen- 


whipple’s inn. 


183 


lords, (as Whipple and Abbott,) attained influence 
and office, and aided in building up the fortunes of 
the Town. Three of these—the most conspicuous 
in the last century, were John Whipple, William 
Turpin and Epenetus Olney, all of whom gained 
frequent and conspicuous mention in the early 
records. 

The celebrity of these old hostels outlived their 
political importance. The oldest was that of John 
Whipple. It stood about half way up Constitution 
Hill. It never attained the size of either of the 
others, its rivals. On the second of March, 1680, 
the Town Council, reciting that the General Assem¬ 
bly had given power to the Town Councils " to 
regulate the disorderly selling of strong drink with¬ 
out license, and to suppress whom they see cause, and 
to grant licenses,” proceeded to grant some of the first 
innholders’ licenses ever given by the Town, to John 
Whipple and to Mary Pray, "to keep public houses 
of entertainment for strangers and providing both 


eral Assembly to be holden at the house of William Gardiner, ordinary keeper 
in South Kingston.” The Marquis Chastellux remarked the same use of the 
word in Virginia, in 1780. The word is still in use in rural England. 


184 


turpin’s inn. 


for horse and man.” " The said Whipple and Pray 
promiseth that they would do according to ye best 
of their skill and abilities .” 1 From the staid and 
sober character of the old Whipple inn, as well as 
from its central position, it became the favourite 
place of meeting of the Town Council and Court of 
Probate. During more than two generations it was 
the scene of strifes and lamentations over unsatis¬ 
factory wills and inventories, and listened to more 
than one family controversy between disappointed 
expectants of paternal estates. " The Worshipful 
Council ” here dispensed a rude and summary justice 
to vagrants, and "non-freeholders,” and admonished 
indiscreet boys. With these, however, their deal¬ 
ings seem never to have been severe, if their fathers 
were the fortunate owners of real property. Whip¬ 
ple’s inn did not outlast the middle of the last cen¬ 
tury. Joseph Whipple, the son of its founder, was 
a prominent merchant and the Lieutenant Governor 
of the Colony. 

1. The house of Mary Pray stood on the site of the old City Tavern, part of 
the “ Dexter donation.” The property, in the hands of various owners, was 
dedicated to the same purposes during one hundred and sixty years. John 
Whipple was licensed in 1674 to keep an ordinary. His south windows looked 
down upon the “ Whipple burying ground,” in the adjoining field. 


turpin’s inn. 


185 


Turpin’s inn stood in the Town street on the site, 
not many years since, occupied by the late Mr. 
William P. Angell. William Turpin was an English¬ 
man. Nothing is known of his earlier life save that 
he was here so early as 1685, and that he taught a 
private school. Finding small encouragement as a 
teacher of boys, the unfortunate man of letters be¬ 
took himself to inn keeping for their elders. The 
transition was not violent or surprising when we 
remember what manner of men English schoolmasters 
too often were, in those, and in later days. The old 
inn, which was kept by several generations of his 
family, was in building in 1695. Turpin was more 
popular in his character of landlord than in that of 
schoolmaster. He had influence enough to obtain 
two grants of land from the Proprietors—first, for 
the building, and then for the enlargement of his house. 
On the 27th of April, 1695, 1 the Town Meeting 

1. The following extracts would show that Turpin had gained considerable 
influence and popularity. The favours shown him were such as would scarcely 
be granted to the most obliging landlord of our day : 

“At a Quarter Meeting, April ye 27, 1G95, Thomas Olney, Moderator. 
‘ Whereas William Turpin hath desired from ye Toune, that they would accom¬ 
modate him with about eight foote broade of land, and in length, so long as 
his house in breadth, to take it out of ye highway adjoining to his land, 


186 


WILLIAM TURPIN. 


authorized him "to take eight feet broad from the 
highway to set his chimney on.” In 1702, he re¬ 
ceived another gift of land for an enlargement. No 
discord between the Proprietors and the equally 
thirsty freeholders, arose on either occasion. The 
house was in some sort, a public institution—the 
State house of the Colony. The old inn keeper did 
not loose all sense of the value of learning. In 
1695-6, (January 27th,) Epenetus Olney and Wil¬ 
liam Turpin were among the chief petitioners for a 
lot of land for a school house " about the highway 
called Dexter’s lane, or about Stamper’s hill.” The 
Town authorized them to take a lot forty feet square, 
but as was usual in those days, the undertaking 
found no support, and nothing more was done. Tur¬ 
pin was probably conversant with all the potations 
then known to English landlords. This, and the 

whereon his house standeth, and for ye use, to set his stack of chimneys upon 
it, to a Roome or house which he is now building, his request to him is 
granted.’ ” This was a “ Quarter Day,” and the assemblage of freemen from 
town and country was probably full. 

Town Meeting Records, vol. I., p. 43. At a Quarter Meeting, January 27, 
1701-2, “ Whereas, William Turpin hath desired of the Toune to grant him a 
piece of land about foure foote in breadth and about twelve foote in length, 
adjoining to ye front part of his land where his house stands, fast by his house, 
his request by ye Toune is granted.” 


TURPIN’S INN. 


187 


ample size of his establishment, lent such aid to his 
popularity, that his house was long the favourite 
place of meeting of the Assembly and of the 
Courts. The first William Turpin died July 18, 
1709, leaving what was in his day an ample estate. 
His son succeeded him in his property, his business 
and his public employments. He was actively en¬ 
gaged in Town affairs of every kind ; 27th July, 1727, 
the Town Meeting appointed William Turpin to 
repair the Town’s pound and set it up in the piece 
of land that was stated for a burying place and train¬ 
ing field, also to repair the stocks and whipping 
post, which, it would seem were worn out by zealous 
usage. He was, in 1722 and 1730, Town Treasurer, 
an office commonly held by the chief men of the 
Plantations. His house was, apparently, the largest 
structure in the Town, until the building of the 
present State House. It retained its popularity un¬ 
til the decay of the old North End, and the estab¬ 
lishment of new hostels near the present centre of 
the Town. Long after it had ceased to be an inn, 
it was visited as a relic of colonial times. Seventy 
years ago, it was still unchanged in appearance, 


188 


turpin’s inn. 


there being as yet little taste for converting old 
houses into new ones. The old inn preserved to the 
last, its antique construction—the massive timbers 
across its ceilings, high roof, with heavy projecting 
eaves, dormer windows, and huge stone chimney, 
and the green, with the unfailing elm in its front. 
The turf beneath its shadow had been the committee 
room of colonial legislators, as well as their place of 
refreshment, and of escape from wearisome debate. 
All these aided in reviving the memory of local great 
men, who, beneath its rafters, had steadfastly pro¬ 
mulgated their political notions, whether they tended 
to the honour or to the ruin of the people. The 
great room, which had served alike for Senate House 
and for dancing hall, recalled the memory of bye- 
gone beauties of the colonial times, and of acts 
which had gone up for animadversion, or censure, 
in the Privy Council at Whitehall. It may be re¬ 
gretted that the old historic building had not stood 
until the pencil or the photograph could perpetuate 
the semblance of a structure so thoroughly identified 
with what was most characteristic of Providence in 
the early days of the last century. 



olney’s inn. 


189 


Epenetus Olney was a brother of Thomas Olney, 
the veteran town clerk. His inn, near the foot of 
Dexter’s (now Olney’s) lane, had a longer celebrity 
than either of its rivals. It w T as one of the earlier 
buildings of the Town and had been used by some 
of his family, for the entertainment of strangers, 
before it assumed the character of a licensed inn. 1 
Standing near the end of the highway from Bos- 
ton, it enjoyed much of the best patronage of trav¬ 
ellers. It was near the Town Mill, and the commer¬ 
cial centre of the Plantations. Its neighbourhood to 
the most public places of resort, peculiarly fitted it 
to be the scene of penal discipline. In 1683, (June,) 
the Assembly ordered stocks to be set up in every 
town, in order to enforce lessons which had been 
better, though less cheaply, taught in a village 
school. The Town Meeting, as was its wont, took 
its own time to obey the order. On the 21st of 
August, 1684, reciting a former vote which had 
failed of its effect, and that the Town was, as they 
say, " destitute ” of stocks, the townsmen accepted 
the offer of Samuel Whipple, to furnish a pair, made 


1. See Staples’s Annals. 


190 


ANNUAL FAIRS. 


of stout oak plank. The proposal was received with 
the same gratitude which attends the foundation of a 
professorship at the present day. The town stocks 
were set up in Dexter’s lane " over against Epenetus 
Olney, his dwelling house.” It does not appear that 
Mr. Olney took part in the general thanksgiving. It 
may be that the Town deemed the lesson most salu¬ 
tary in that neighbourhood. The frequenters of the 
green in front of Olney’s inn, who discussed the 
latest news, and drank punch on a summer’s after¬ 
noon, had the advantage of a monition from the 
stocks " over against them,” on the other side of the 
way. "Their bane and antidote were both before 
them,” and they could make such reflections as they 
thought fit. Throughout the colonial times, the inns 
of Olney, Turpin and of Whipple, while it lasted, 
were the centres of any unusual excitement, and the 
principal scenes of public events. Thus, 23d Sep¬ 
tember, 1696, the Town Meeting reciting an act 
establishing an annual fair in Providence, appointed 
places for setting it up. " Stalls for goods shall be 
in the highway against William Turpin’s land, and 
in the highway at Epenetus Olney’s house, near the 



INN LICENSES. 


191 


stocks,”—no doubt an effectual persuasive to honest 
dealing—"and one in the highway against John 
Whipple’s house,”—" they not damnifying the pas¬ 
sage.” Captain William Hopkins was appointed 
" clarke of the Market ” for the fair. Similar orders 
were made in 1697 and 1698, when Philip Tilling- 
hast was " clarke.” Probably none profited more 
largely than did these chief inn keepers, by the ex¬ 
citement of the week. We may regret that no far¬ 
ther notice can be found of these earliest exhibitions 
of the native products and foreign imports of the 
Colony. 

The influence of the most popular landlords suf¬ 
fered occasional eclipse, or the misconduct of the 
less worthy of the brotherhood brought discredit 
upon all. On the 5th of June, 1713, on the day 
when the Town Meeting protested against the first 
issue of Colonial paper bills, an election of council- 
men occurred. Soon after it, Arthur Fenner and 
his supporters, in the midst of what appears to have 
been a scene of violent clamour and disturbance, 
objected that none should be chosen to the council 
" who kept public houses and retailed strong drink.” 


192 


olney’s inn. 


The protest was not wholly unreasonable. The 
councilmen, who were also the licensers, were not 
the most fitting judges of their own qualifications 
and conduct as landlords. After a vehement debate 
and although a valid election had taken place, the 
meeting actually ordered a new vote, by which other 
persons were elected. This was but a temporary 
check to the influence of Olney, Turpin and Whip¬ 
ple—three of the most substantial freeholders of 
their day. Olney’s inn passed to his descendants of 
several generations with increasing celebrity and 
repute. It outlived all its rivals. At the revolution 
Joseph Olney, by a wisdom which did not die with 
him, discerned that patriotism might be turned to 
account as a provocative to thirst. He therefore, 
with an imposing popular ceremonial, dedicated his 
great elm, as a "Liberty Tree.” Under its shade, 
innumerable glasses were drained to the success of 
the revolution, many of them by patriots who ap¬ 
pear to have given it little other active support. 
The celebrity of the establishment continued until 
the later years of the last century, when it began to 
decay. In 1803, Col. Jere. Olney, of revolutionary 




THEIR DECAY. 


193 


note, built bis house (yet standing) upon the green 
before it. Tavern and Liberty tree passed away 
together, and thus vanished one of the last memo¬ 
rials of colonial and revolutionary politics. 

When Providence had at length its own Court 
House in Gaol lane, the political importance of the 
taverns began, though slowly, to decline. Some¬ 
times the Quaker meeting-house, near by, was lent 
by its grave and peaceful owners, for the promotion 
of sobriety in public assemblages. The freemen 
became too numerous to find comfortable shelter 
in a tavern hall. The commercial period of the 
Town brought an increasing regard to formality and 
decorum in Town meetings, by which the ancient 
yeomanry had set too little store. The country inns 
retained something of the character of those which 
had belonged to the "compact part of the Town.” 
At length, these were in turn, destroyed by the rail¬ 
roads, which, assimilating town and country, have 
worked one of the silent revolutions of our day. 

The trade of the Plantations, in despite of its 
burdens of paper currency, continued slowly, but 
surely to increase, throughout the middle of the last 
17 


194 


INCREASE OF FOREIGN COMMERCE. 


century. The facility for building vessels was un¬ 
surpassed elsewhere, and navigation had become the 
favourite pursuit of all young and ambitious men. 
They did not stay to enquire whether their enter¬ 
prises were in accordance with the English naviga¬ 
tion acts. The chief trade of the Plantations was 
with the Guinea coast and with the Spanish West 
Indies, and was aided by distilleries which occupied 
the most conspicuous sites in the Town street . 1 A 
few of the more adventurous and wealthy merchants 
sent vessels to Bordeaux. These brought in cargoes 
of French goods and wines, which in some manner 
contrived to escape the notice of the colonial cus¬ 
tom house. At this point nothing was needed but 
some new opportunity. It came with the seven 
years’ war. The colonists had not been unfriendly 
with the French of the West Indies, and many of 
them would not be converted into enemies without 

1. “ Abbott’s Still House ” was at the southeast corner of Market Square. 
Angell’s near the present Thomas street. 

It was an evidence of prosperity, that, in October, 1751, the Council or¬ 
dered a new road “ from the present highway, northward to Smithfield line.” 
Colonial Records, vol. IV., p. 118. There was a manifest increase of the popu¬ 
lation and value of the “ North woods.” 



LOSSES AND GAINS. 


195 


their own consent. Whatever their feelings towards 
their national antagonists, the occasion was eagerly 
seized by all. To some of the navigators of the 
Plantations, illicit trade gave no qualms of con¬ 
science. Others were equally ready to act as pri¬ 
vateersmen against their nominal foes. With the 
return of peace, the result of these diverse opera¬ 
tions, was an increase of wealth such as passed all 
former experiences in the Town. 1 Better than this 
was the spirit of enterprise and activity which was 
awakened, and which, diverted into better and safer 
channels, was not destined to become extinct. 

When the townsmen were ready to count up their 
gains and losses, it appeared by a list, 2 that from the 
20th of May, 1756 to January 21, 1764, there had 
been taken or cast away, sixty-five vessels, chiefly 
schooners and sloops. The names of their com¬ 
manders were then, and still are, familiar in the 
Plantations. They were the young and active men 
of their day, who soon recovered from their losses 

1. 18 November, 1762, Governor Ward, in accordance with a vote of the 
Legislature, appointed a Thanksgiving for successes in the seven years’ war. 

2. Providence Gazette , January 21, 1764. 


196 


THE GAZETTE. 


and became the prosperous merchants of a later 
time. With the first appearance of the Gazette , we 
learn that private underwriters had, for some time, 
carried on business in the Town, and (which was less 
to its advantage) insurers of lottery tickets, Novem¬ 
ber, 1762, (1763). There were private under¬ 

writers in Providence at the beginning of the seven 
years’ war, and claims for marine losses. This may 
be seen in the inventory of Thomas Manchester, who 
died August, 1756. 

With the close of the seven years’ war came the 
"Providence Gazette (October, 1762.) It gives 
a clearer view than was before attainable of the 
activity and picturesqueness of the Town street. It 
is to us surprising that the men of the last century 
should have been so long in learning the value of 
such an important instrument of commerce. Boston 
and New York had discerned it long before, and 
doubtless reaped the profit of the discovery. Dur¬ 
ing the earlier half of the eighteenth century, the 
marriages, deaths and obituaries of many prominent 
Rhode Island men must be sought in the Boston 
newspapers. The legislature of Rhode Island 


197 


THE GAZETTE. 

ordered that some of the most important legal notices 
should be published in them. Ex. gr. 12 June, 
1758. By "An Act for the equal distribution of 
Insolvent estates,” the times and places for the 
meeting of the Commissioners are to be posted and 
also advertised "in one of the Boston newspapers, 
for three weeks successively.” By the end of the 
seven years’ war, the merchants of Providence be¬ 
came weary of the inconvenience, and the Gazette 1 
was the result of their impatience. Its first publish¬ 
ers were also the first booksellers and stationers of 

1. The Gazette was first published in a building in the Town street, opposite 
the Court House, by Sarah and William Goddard. It was removed to Judge 
Jenckes’s store, near the Great Bridge, and published at his book shop just 
above it, at the sign of Shakspeare’s head, August 6, 1763. After May 11, 1765, 
it was discontinued for four months, the profits being insufficient. 

September 19, 1767, the Gazette was published by Sarah Goddard and John 
Carter. It was greatly improved in appearance and typography. On Novem¬ 
ber 12, 176S, it was published by John Carter alone. 

As the office of the publishers was the place of general resort, they occasion¬ 
ally acted as brokers in the sale of merchandize. Gazette , January 8, 1763: 
“ To be sold only for want of employ, a likely, spry, healthy negro boy, about 
ten years of age. Enquire of the printer.” See also July 6, 1761. 

John Carter had been a pupil of Dr. Franklin. He justly prided himself 
upon the correctness of his typography, and the fulness of his intelligence. 
The Gazette is one of the best histories of the Revolution. It contains many 
local details, anecdotes and domestic occurrences not elsewhere to be found. 
It had no superior among the Colonial newspapers of its day. 


198 


THE COVE. 


the Town. They imported and sold the works of 
eminent authors, as well as the current English litera¬ 
ture. While John Carter lived in Meeting street, 
in the house yet belonging to his posterity, the 
Gazette was printed and published in a room in the 
lower story. On the other side he kept his books 
for sale. Thither resorted the purchasers of Boston 
magazines and papers, and the few readers of that 
day. 1 

Commerce, stimulated by the war, in its turn aided 
the movement of the Town towards a new and more 
convenient centre. When we first gain a clear view 
of it from the columns of the Gazette , the advance 
had already begun. Few houses were built at the 
North end and every removal was in a southerly di¬ 
rection. The lower part of the cove was now the 
scene of the greatest commercial activity. On its 
east side was water deep enough for brigs and 
barques, making voyages to London and Dublin. 
Some of the wealthier houses in the Plantations, as 
Joseph and William Russell, and Clark & Nightingale, 2 

1. For some account of William Goddard and of John Carter, the first edi¬ 
tors, see Staples’s Annals of Providence. 

2. May, 1773, the ship Providence sailed from Clark & Nightingale’s wharf, 
where is now Steeple street. 



FOREIGN TRADE. 


199 


the chief importers of English and Irish goods, then 
and long afterwards unladed their cargoes at the 
warehouses which were behind the residences or 
offices of their owners, on the Town street. At the 
corner of a long dock or slip of considerable depth 
and capacity, now filled up and called Steeple street, 
was the office of Clark & Nig htingale. The house 
of William Russell was near the foot of Meeting 
street. 1 His business was very considerable, accord¬ 
ing to the colonial standard of that day. On the 
arrival in the cove of a barque or brigantine for 
Joseph and William Russell, their advertisement of 
her cargo often filled an entire page of the Gazette . 
These buildings still remain, but few would now 
search that neighbourhood for memorials of the old 
foreign commerce of the Town. 

The Post office, which always waits upon public 
convenience, followed the current. On the 16th 
February, 1758, Mr. Samuel Chace was appointed 
by Dr. Franklin, as the first postmaster of Provi¬ 
dence. At the beginning of the Gazette , (1762,) 
the Post office was in the two storied wooden build- 


1. It was, until recently, the residence of Z. Allen, Esq. 




200 


THE POST OFFICE. 


ing which recently stood opposite to St. John’s 
Church. 1 In September and December, 1766, it 
appears, by its advertisements to have been over 
against the Court House. Even this was too remote 
from the new place of concourse, and two years 
later, the Post office looked out upon the square. It 
was there kept in the building lately removed to 
make room for the new street behind the old city 
hall. 2 

From the beginning of the Gazette it received 
comparatively few advertisements from the North or 
the South ends of the Town. Most of them came 
from the neighborhood of the bridge. There all old 
enterprises were accumulating, and new ones were 


1. It was but an appendage to the Bookseller’s shop, which occupied the 
same floor. January 2G, 1765. 

Gazette , March 16, 1765. “ On Tuesday next, the Post office and Printing 
office will be removed to the house opposite Mr. Nathan Angell’s, near the sign 
of the Golden Eagle, where the business of both will be transacted as usual.” 

2. The old “ Jenckes House.” 

It is pleasant to discover that there was one place in the Colony which could 
bid defiance to the iniquitous attempts of the General Assembly, to enforce 
the circulation of its depreciated paper. Gazette , October 21, 1763. “Notice 
is hereby given that for the future, no letters will be delivered out of the Post 
Office, without the postage being paid down in silver money, according to the 
custom at every other Post Office in America. Samuel Chaoe.” 


TIIE MARKET PLACE. 


201 



begun. In the earliest days of the Gazette , " Cheap- 
side” was known by its present familiar name, and 
its medley of wares was even greater than at present. 

For ten years before the Town Meeting applied 
itself seriously to its improvement, the public square 
had been gaining something of its present character. 
It was called in ordinary discourse "the Market 
Place.” The flats over which the tide had flowed up 
to the Town street, were now filled, and a long dock, 
on the site now covered by the Market house, was 
all that remained of the ancient river bed. Venders 
of fish and lobsters, and small market vessels 
monopolized the "Town wharf” on its west side. 
The south side of the square, which had long borne 
with the smoke and fumes of "Abbott’s still house,” 
was now, (as we have seen,) put to the more seemly 
uses of the Post office. At the east end of the dock 
was the old w hay ward,” with its unfailing annoy¬ 
ances, which maintained their position until many 
years later. 1 On the east side of the Market Place 

1. Several years before the building of the Market House, ineffectual at¬ 
tempts were made for the public accommodation. Town Meeting, 19 April, 
1758: “ Voted that Mr. David Bucklin be allowed the liberty to erect a public 
market house on the Town’s land near the bridge—that the Town Clerk give a 


202 


THE MARKET PLACE. 


was a steep bank of earth, the foot of the ancient 
hill. On this bank, next to Hanover, (now College,) 
street, stood the house of Dr. Ephraim Bowen, next 
north of it was the house of Governor Jenckes, 
and next the inn of Daniel Abbott. On the north side 
of the square was a row of old wooden houses of 
two stories, with heavy projecting gables, the like 
of which may still be seen in the lower part of South 
Main street. The landscape was completed by the 
bridge, then only eighteen feet wide, with its creak¬ 
ing draw, and the whipping-post as its only archi¬ 
tectural ornament. The square itself was cumbered 
with heaps of stones, and served as the general de¬ 
pository of the rubbish of the neighborhood. Its 
condition was not improved during the times of 
winter snow, and of the spring currents descending 
from the hill. Complaints of this abominable quag¬ 
mire had at times been uttered, and in 1767-9, came 
the suggestion that an improvement of it would add 

lease thereof to the said Bucklin for the term of seven years. Provided the 
said market do not incommode the hayward.” The undertaking was prema¬ 
ture and was never executed. The “ hayward,” i. e., the public hay scales and 
market, remained at the east end of the market house until near the end of the 
last century. 





THE MARKET HOUSE. 


203 


to the beauty as well as to the profits of the Town. 
There were now some men of liberal tastes and edu¬ 
cation, who could give force to arguments like these. 
Seven years went by before they could prevail with 
the thrifty generation, tolerant of nuisances, who 
judged that ill savours were of the same nature as 
taxes, and quite as endurable. The inevitable lot¬ 
tery of those days, was the first resort of the build¬ 
ers of the new Market House. 1 So little care has 
been bestowed upon the documents of the old Town 
that we are left without information as to the pro¬ 
jectors or the cost of the new structure. It is 
scarcely mentioned in the Town records,, and we 
only learn from the Gazette that the corner-stone was 
laid by Nicholas Brown on the 8th June, 1773. We 
have no account of the ceremonial. 

This was the most costly undertaking upon which 
the Town had, as yet, ventured. Other buildings of 
the same date, (1774,) give evidence of taste, and 
probably had the same designers. The Town then 
began to assume the form which it has since pre¬ 
served, and will probably retain. The old building 


1. Gazette, January 16, 1773. 


204 


THE MARKET HOUSE. 


is the monument of the ending of an old epoch, and 
of the beginning of a new one. The agricultural 
village had now developed into the modern commer¬ 
cial town. The new municipal edifice did it no dis¬ 
credit. Its proportions were exceedingly good, and 
it had ample provision for the public needs even of a 
much later day. Something more will be said of it 
in another paper, and of the economy of the towns¬ 
men, who compelled their officers to provide their 
own places of official business, while the Market 
House chambers were rented for the benefit of the 
Town treasury. The same thrifty spirit prompted the 
permission to the Masonic fraternity to build the upper 
hall as their own property. This last structure has a 
history of its own. After it had long served for the 
convivial and other assemblies of the brotherhood, 
the society fell under the displeasure of politicians 
who sought to make profit at their expense. In 
their days of poverty and eclipse, a generation ago, 
their assemblies ceased, and their hall was rented. 
Many remember it in their earlier days as the chief 
place of public lectures. Its remaining ornaments, 
full length, but not well attested portraits of King 


MASONIC HALL. 


205 


Solomon and Hiram of Tyre, the work of an English 
artist, (of about 1795,) named Sugden—gave to 
boys of the period, their first conception of the 
splendors of an oriental monarchy. His tinsel crown 
and grizzly beard gave emphasis to the sayings of 
the wise man of old, and inspired respect for the 
wisdom of a society which had so profited by his 
precepts. 1 

When the square had at last been brought into a 
respectable condition, the chief shops, both for 
necessaries and for luxuries, speedily gathered 

1. During the century of the existence of the old Hall it has been the scene 
of much local and authentic history. Beyond this—whatever has been want¬ 
ing in fact, has been supplied by the imagination. During the Anti-Masonic 
excitement of fifty years ago, reports became current, and some were doubtless 
persuaded to believe that divers unfaithful brethren had expiated with their 
lives, the breach of their Masonic obligations. In the “ testimony ” received 
by a committee of the Rhode Island General Assembly, appointed to investi¬ 
gate these and the like charges, (1832,) Abraham Wilkinson is represented 
as haranguing a crowd in the Market place, near the Masonic hall, and esti¬ 
mating the number of those who had suffered death in the lodge room as about 
five hundred. Report, (1832,) pp. 46, Appendix 60. 

In the heat of partizanship, it never occurred to the men of those days, that 
the sudden and unexplained disappearance of so many well known citizens, 
without any solicitude or enquiry on the part of their creditors, was something 
wholly foreign to the habits of the Town. But anything served as an argument 
in the politics of that time. 

18 


206 


THE MARKET PLACE. 


around it. It was a sufficient direction to the read¬ 
ers of the Gazette that the advertisers were " oppo¬ 
site the market,” or " near the market.” The annoy¬ 
ances which had been borne with patience by a 
generation not delicate in its sensibilities, were not 
speedily cleared away. Even the name of the Mar¬ 
ket place was not undisputed. The Fenner family, 
by their advertisements and in other ways, tried to 
fasten upon it the name of " Fenner’s square.” 1 The 
attempt met with no favourable response from the 
public. Occupations not usually attended by any 
benediction when established in populous neighbor¬ 
hoods, lingered during several years. 2 3 

But with the increase of commerce, manufacturers 
of soft soap, etc., gradually yielded to more profit¬ 
able tenants.3 Law and insurance followed mercan¬ 
tile business, and by the close of the Revolution the 


1. Gazette , March 9, 1776. 

2. Gazette, January 2d, 1773. “ John Westcott, butcher, at the east end of 
the Great bridge, continues the Butchering business in every part. He hath 
provided himself a large copper for scalding hogs, adjoined to the Market 
place.” 

3. October 19, 1776. “ To be sold by John Chace at his shop near the Mar¬ 
ket,” a list of drugs, groceries, etc. 


INCREASING COMMERCE. 


207 


square had assumed the character which it has borne 
to the present day. 1 

At the close of the seven years’ war, Providence 
was the centre of a populous region, and possessed 
much of the West India trade of the interior of 
Massachusetts. A considerable variety of merchan¬ 
dize could be furnished from its shops and wharves. 
Some distress followed the reaction after the war, 
but it was of no long continuance. The new regu¬ 
lations of trade soon provided causes of dissatisfac¬ 
tion, and the history of the Revolution began. But 
while it yet lingered,the Plantations enjoyed as great 
a prosperity as the legislature, with its paper money 
laws, would permit. With the changes of the times 
much of the old business of the Town has become 
greatly contracted, and some has become wholly ob¬ 
solete. Its distilleries, once the chief support of its 
African trade, now require some search for their 
discovery. Auction sales of negroes have passed 
away with the old inns. 2 Employers of labour 

1. December 7,1782. “ The Insurance Office is removed from the house 
of John Jenckes, Esq., to a room over the Market House.”— Gazette. 

2. October 14, 1766, a negro was advertised for sale by auction, at the 
Crown Coffee house, opposite to the Court House. Such sales were not infre¬ 
quent throughout those years. 


208 


SIGNS. 


would not now be earnest competitors for the refuse 
of the jail. 1 

The shops of Providence were now conspicuous, 
not merely through their advertisements, but by 
huge signs, or by emblems and devices after the old 
fashion of Europe. Many of these were suspended 
from projecting beams, or from a gallows set across 
the sidewalk, and are thus represented in the rude 
wood cuts of the Gazette . These were the trade¬ 
marks of that generation, and were executed with 
the best artistic skill which the Town then afforded, 
and which, it must be acknowledged, was not great. 
The signs often had little reference to the business 
carried on below. We know not when they were 
first set up, but in 1762 these ornaments of traffic 
everywhere solicited the custom of the wayfarer. 
" James Green, at the sign of the Elephant,” just 


1. October 4, 1766. Next to the advertisement of a negro boy, appears this : 
“ To be sold at Public Vendue to the highest bidder, at the goal in Providence 
on Wednesday the 24th of this instant October, by order of the Superior Court 
pursuant to his sentence, One Joseph Hart, a stout, able bodied man, for the 
term of three years, to satisfy the damages and costs of his prosecution, con¬ 
victed of stealing sundry goods from Mr. Obadiah Sprague of North Provi¬ 
dence. William Wheaton, Sheriff.” 


JEREMIAH F. JENKINS. 


209 


above Steeple street, long sold at wholesale and retail, 
Braziery and Piece goods, rum, indigo, and tea. A 
like medley constituted the stock of most other 
tradesmen of that day. " The new brick house ” of 
Governor Elisha Brown, at the North end, had some 
of the most conspicuous and fashionable shops. 
There Jeremiah Fones Jenkins, a man of much note 
in his day, and a royalist, a few years later dispensed 
such luxuries of silks, linen, scarlet and sky-blue 
broadcloths, as satisfied the needs of his generation. 
His advertisements are among the most frequent in 
the earlier Gazettes , and give a lively picture of the 
gay colours in which the more wealthy townsmen 
arrayed themselves on Sundays and feast days. He 
was an eminent Freemason, and was arrested as a 
suspected monarchist during the Revolution. He 
did not find that dealing in such finery was a road to 
ruin. With increasing prosperity, he bought, some 
years later, the property at the corner of the bridge, 
which afterwards belonged to the Washington In¬ 
surance Company. There he carried on the same 
business on a yet larger scale, until 1812, when he 
died rich. His most conspicuous rivals were Joseph 


210 


CLARK AND NIGHTINGALE. 


and William Russell, (October, 1762,) "at the sign 
of the Golden Eagle near the Court House.” These 
offered velvets, broadcloths, superfine, of scarlet for 
men’s and women’s long cloaks, also paper, looking- 
glasses and books. Near them, ( Gazette , November 
12, 1768,) " Clark & Nightingale at their store, sign 
of the Fish and Frying Pan, opposite Oliver Arnold, 
Esq.,” had "just imported from London, a large and 
complete assortment of English and Indian goods 
suitable for the season which they will sell on the very 
lowest terms for cash. Also the best of Bohea and 
Pepper by the hundred, dozen, or single pound. 
W. India and N. E. Rum, Sugar, Melasses, etc.” 

They long outlasted their neighbours of the 
" Golden Eagle.” Under this ominous sign the} r 
became one of the foremost mercantile houses of their 
day, continuing until the memory of some now liv¬ 
ing. Their houses were two of the finest in Provi¬ 
dence. The house of Colonel Nightingale was the 
residence of the late John Carter Brown. 

Knight Dexter, nearly opposite, (on the site of 
the old city tavern,) sold in the shop beneath it, at 
the sign of the "Boy and Book,” broadcloths, linens, 


THE FIRST STAGE COACH. 


211 


etc. Pewter, also Bibles and spelling books. These 
he was ready to exchange for " old tenor, or lawful 
money of this Colony and Connecticut, at an ex¬ 
change of 23J for for one.” Thomas Pelham, near 
the sign of the Lion, in Constitution Hill, made and 
sold pig-tail, and cut and rolled tobacco. More 
needful trades seem to have lacked due encourage¬ 
ment, for the Gazette (Feb. 19, 1763,) announced 
that " a brazier, a potter, a stocking weaver, and a 
clock and watch maker are much wanted in the 
Town, there being none nearer than Boston.” Bichard 
Olney’s inn was at the sign of the "Crown.” This 
old two-storied wooden building, two doors above the 
Court House and nearly opposite to the square, was 
removed in 1879. That it was a place of repute is 
evident from its being occasionally the place of 
meeting of the Town Council. 1 From the "Crown 
Coffee House,” (July 11, 1767,) "The stage coach 
sets out every Tuesday morning for Boston.” It 
was owned by Thomas Sabin, who announced that 
" said Sabin intends following the business all the 
summer season.” He had done so during the sum- 

1. July 21, 1764. 1766, September 27. 


212 


the Turk’s head. 


mer of 1766. During some previous years, Sabin 
had proposed to despatch a coach to Boston when¬ 
ever a sufficient number of passengers applied. The 
business had increased so far beyond his expectations 
that in 1767, he intended to send one every Tuesday 
morning throughout the summer. 

Smith and Sabin had a shop called 1 " The Sultan 
Mustapha.” It first was kept at the corner of the 
Town street and Market square. 2 It derived its 
name from the sign of the "head of Mustapha Sultan 
of the Turkish Empire.” This appalling way mark 
served the peaceful purpose of attracting buyers of 
"dry goods, both East and West Indian, at the lowest 
rates.” The name proved too long for the memory 
of customers, who abbreviated it to the " Sultan’s 
head ” and the "Turk’s head.” Its grim and frown¬ 
ing aspect made it one of the most conspicuous of 
street ornaments, during fifty years. This well re¬ 
membered piece of wood carving had many owners, 
and during fifty years attracted buyers to many 
localities. It long adorned " Whitman’s corner.” 
There it found a resting place until the great gale of 


L. July 9, 1763. 


2. January 2d, 1764. 


SIMEON THAYER. 


213 


September, 1815. In the general wreck of the 
neighborhood it was swept away, and finally lost to 
sight beneath the waters of the cove. 

At the North end, (October 6, 1763,) Simeon 
Thayer, afterwards of Revolutionary fame, made 
and sold at the sign of the Hat, bag wigs, paste, 
brigadiers, scratch, dress and Tyewigs. As if these 
were not enough, he adds, " and all other sorts of 
wigs.” All this he did with the assistance of Michael 
Cumings, late of London. Thayer may have caught 
some martial enthusiasm from his work, which blazed 
out in later days. His success awakened the envy 
of a rival, who thus gave a defiant challenge a few 
days later, (October 22, 1763): "Thomas Healy, 
cuts, curls and frizzes gentlemen’s and ladies’ hair, 
and engrafts a tail, to their entire satisfaction. He 
engages to give the Ladies equal satisfaction with 
any London hair cutter in Providence.” 

At the same date we learn that the distill-house of 
Mr. James Angell was in full operation, "not far 
above the great bridge.” 1 We may trust that it was 
not as an emblem of the hospitality to be enjoyed 


1. It stood where is now the Baptist Meeting-House yard. 


214 


NEWPORT PACKETS. 


within, that " William Earl, who formerly kept the 
sign of the White Bear in Newport,” announced 
that "he now keeps the same sign in Broad street, 
near the Court House, where gentlemen may be well 
entertained.” "April 28, 1764, Joseph Olney, at 
the sign of the Golden Bull at the North end, sold 
hardware and rum, and other equally well assorted 
merchandise. Nathaniel Balch, at the sign of the 
Hat, near Capt. Joseph Olney’s, sold stoneware and 
decanters, pipes, pepper, spices, etc., Chesire cheese, 
also hats, flour, chocolate, . . also a few lottery 

tickets. 1764, Robert Perrigo, cordwainer, at the 
sign of the Boot, also sold butter, by the small 
quantity.” 

October 8, 1763. During the same years, Thomas 
and Benjamin Lindsey—he who lured the Gaspee to 
her ruin—announced that they " ply twice a week 
between Newport and Providence.” They had a 
rival in Hoy stead Hacker, afterwards of the Navy of 
the Revolution. He informs the public that his 
sloops run every day between Newport and Provi¬ 
dence, from the wharf opposite Dr. Gibbs’s.” 1 Sin- 


1. The tide then flowed up to the Town street. 


THE ABBOTT HOUSE. 


215 


gle passage nine pence, November 7, 1767. Ed¬ 
ward Thurber’s Brazen Lion is depicted in the 
Gazette , (February 13, 1768,) swinging from its 
gallows, near the North end. The history and for¬ 
tunes of the " Bunch of Grapes,” which now orna¬ 
ments the rooms of the Historical Society, have 
already been written. South of Market Square, 
John and Nicholas Brown had their several places of 
business, but they had no " signs.” The old Abbott 
House had now become the property of Jabez 
Bowen, the nephew of its founder, who was after¬ 
wards Lieutenant Governor. He lived there many 
years, and there sold drugs and dye-woods. Some¬ 
what later a clothier or cloth dresser at the North 
end hung up a huge portrait of the sun. Under it 
were the words, " The best clothier,” which he in¬ 
tended to be read, "the best clothier under the sun.” 

While the Town street was thus resplendent with 
signs of the principal dealers, inferior tradesmen who 
established themselves in the neighborhood contented 
themselves with announcing that they were " near 
the Lion,” or "the Golden Eagle,” etc., which thus 
did duty for the whole vicinit} r , with no small saving 
of expense. 


216 


thurston’s inn. 


Whoever at this period was not satisfied with the 
bargains offered under these and the like symbols of 
traffic in the Town street, and crossed the bridge in 
hope of better fortune on the West side, found there 
few shops to reward his search. After a few paces, 
he first encountered the inn of Luke Thurston, at 
the sign of the "Brigantine.” Thurston was a man 
of some local note in his day. When there came a 
slight increase of population on the West side, the 
Town Council deemed it politic to hold an occasional 
session there, and Thurston had the honour of enter¬ 
taining them. 1763. A few steps farther on, (May 
9, 1767,) Jonathan Russell offered English and In¬ 
dia goods, under the sign of the " Black Boy.” Not 
far off, Silas Downer, a graduate of Harvard College, 
(a contemporary of John Adams,) in addition to 
his duties as an attorney, proposed to write letters 
to their friends abroad, for people who were unable 
to do it for themselves. The West side at that day 
furnished but few advertisers. But among them was 
one who in his variety of occupations, distanced ail 
competitors in the Town street. October, 1762, 
Samuel Carew kept a tavern, also a livery stable, 


CAREW’s TAVERN. 


217 


and an apothecary’s shop, and practiced physic at the 
sign of the '‘Pestle and Mortar,” and afterwards, 
(1767,) at the sign of the "Traveller,” "near the 
Meeting-House, on the West side.” From the 
length of time during which Carew pursued his vo¬ 
cation unmolested, we may infer that the people of 
his day were vigorous in constitution, and tolerant 
of blunders, and set down all recoveries to the credit 
of the practitioner, while they ascribed any mishaps 
from his prescriptions to " natural causes,” as at a 
much later day. 

It seems singular that so simple an expedient as 
that of numbering the houses, did not suggest 
itself, even in a closely built city like London, until 
late in the last century. The Plantations adhered 
with their usual tenacity to old usages, and kept 
their accustomed signs long after they had been 
abandoned elsewhere. Even here they were becom¬ 
ing obsolete, and as they swung to and fro, in the 
winter wind, their creaking sounds called forth no 
pious ejaculations from those endeavouring to slum¬ 
ber in their neighborhood. The September gale, 

(1815,) with its wide-spread destruction, brought 
19 


218 


REVENUE OFFICERS. 


some long-needed reforms. The disastrous accidents 
© 

which it occasioned, led to the removal of the old 
signs projecting over the highways, and one of the 
antique and picturesque displays of the Town street 
came to its final close. 

These may suffice for specimens of trade and its 
decorations, at the close of the seven years’ war. 
The commerce which it promoted was unlike that of 
more recent days. Great Britain bore most of the 
expense, and the colonies reaped the harvest. Yet, 
with all their increase, the Plantations were not 
deemed sufficiently important to have a custom house 
of their own. All vessels entered and cleared at 
Newport. There was but one officer of revenue in 
Providence, the "Surveyor of the King’s Customs,” 
commonly styled—being the only one—" the King’s 
Officer.” He was appointed by "The Commission¬ 
ers of His Majesty’s Revenue” in Boston, and each 
new vacancy called forth angry complaints, that 
none but a Massachusetts man was ever deemed 
worthy of this royal favour.i The utter loss of the 

1. John (afterwards Sir John) Temple, Surveyor General in Boston, had 
jurisdiction over the northern revenue district, in 1774. 


NEW HOUSES. 


219 


Custom House documents, leaves us to mere con¬ 
jectures respecting the extent and value of the colo¬ 
nial trade. It was not until after the Revolution, 
that the port was indulged with a full staff of offi¬ 
cers of the revenue, and with the patronage which 
insured some support to a national administration. 1 

The increase of moneyed wealth appeared in the 
erection of new and more spacious houses in the 
Town street. Among these was the residence of 
Benjamin Cushing, the first tax payer of his day. 2 
It originally stood upon North Court street, at the 
corner of the Town street, and has but lately been 
removed half way up the hill. The house of John 
Carter, in Meeting street, was the first fruit of suc¬ 
cessful journalism in Providence. John Updike, a 
prosperous navigator, built at the foot of the same 
street. Brick houses of ample size, and of good 
architectural design, now became frequent. In 
earlier years, there had been a lack of good building 
material, as well as of the wealth to employ it. 
Stone, except for chimneys, had been beyond the 

1. Gazette , October 5,1763. November 19, 1763. 

2. It was lately Mr. Bridgham’s. 


220 


EARLIEST BRICK HOUSES. 


means of the_earlier generations, and but few bricks 
were made in this neighborhood. The house now 
standing upon the Butler Asylum estate, was built 
by "Justice Richard Browne ” far back in the last 
century. He was, besides his farming, one of the 
earliest paper makers, carrying on the business upon 
the grounds occupied by the print works of the late 
P. Allen. He completed his century and his life in 
1812. This is probably the oldest building in the 
city of this material, and it is but in part of brick. 
This extravagance found no imitators until after the 
middle period of the last century, when a few of the 
more substantial inhabitants ventured upon a like 
experiment. The old brick block near the Church 
of the Redeemer, in North Main street, is styled in 
the earliest advertisements in the Gazette , "the new 
brick dwelling house towards the upper end of the 
Town street.” April 23, 1763. It was built by 
Lieutenant-Governor Elisha Brown, in his more 
prosperous days. Only the south half of it remains. 
It would scarcely have been accounted an architect¬ 
ural ornament in any subsequent generation. Of a 
few years later date, (1774,) were the houses of 


SErULCHRAL MONUMENTS. 


221 


Joseph Brown, (now the Providence Bank,) of 
Nicholas Brown, on the west side of the Town street; 
and of John Brown, which has disappeared. At the 
foot of Planet street is the house, where in later 
years, the affair of the Gaspee was arranged, and 
which was afterwards the residence of Welcome 
Arnold. These, and other edifices of like cost and 
style, (such as the house of William Russell, lately 
owned by Z. Allen, Esq.,) yet bear testimony to 
the taste and the success of the last colonial genera¬ 
tion. These were farther displayed in works from 
which its predecessors would have shrunk. The 
oldest college building and the new Market House 
are sufficient proofs of advancing wealth and knowl¬ 
edge. 

With this regard to the comfort of the living, 
there was now an unaccustomed respect to the mem¬ 
ory of the dead. During the earlier generations, 
these had slumbered in the household graves, with 
nothing but the memory of survivors to mark their 
resting places, or at best, only rude headstones, 
without inscriptions. The poverty in which this 
seeming neglect had its beginning had passed away, 


222 


MONUMENTS. 


and the religious fancies which had approved it, had 
lost their influence. Men now began to claim kin¬ 
dred with those whom their fathers had left beyond 
the sea. As the century wore on, the sentiment be¬ 
gan to manifest itself in the armorial bearings carved 
upon tombstones of Braintree slate, by which the 
fourth generation in Providence sought to preserve 
the memory of their English lineage. Massachusetts 
had doue this long before. There was, until late in 
the century, but little encouragement to such work¬ 
manship in the Plantations. The earliest headstones 
must have been wrought in Boston or Newport. 
They were made here bj' the middle of the last 
century. 1 These were probably all of that Braintree 
slate, so enduring and so plainly sculptured, which 
abound in the old North Burial Ground. But by 
1760, there were monuments which might compare 
with the sculptured stones which an earlier genera¬ 
tion in Massachusetts had imported from England. 
There were none but of slate or sandstone. So late 
as 1796, the earliest marble slabs, of no extraordi¬ 
nary pretension, were ordered from Attleborough. 

1. John Anthony Angell, stone cutter, died May 15, 1756, leaving as his most 
substantial assets £80 worth of gravestones. 


THE COVE. 


223 


Their sculptor, (Mr. Tingley,) did not commence 
his labours in Providence until the early years of the 
present century, (1811). 1 

The ship-building and foreign commerce of the 
Town, was, in great part, carried on from the cove 
and from the stream above it, until many years after 
the Revolution. An established trade is ever tena¬ 
cious of its early habitation, and here, as elsewhere, 
it made a stout tight before it was finally expelled. 
The lease granted, (as we have seen, 18 April, 1753,) 
for ship-building in the Mooshassuc, was followed up 
by a long series of favours by the Townsmen to the 
interests of the " North End .”2 In 1763, a lottery 
was granted to raise £90 to build a draw in Weybos- 
sett Bridge. 3 In 1767, the Town Meeting authorized 
the Council to repair the " Workhouse wharf.” This 
stood upon the west side of the Mooshassuc, a short 
distance below Mill bridge. 4 Such a navigation 

1. The first marble cutters In Providence commenced their operations soon 
after the year 1800. 

2. See the “ scheme,” Gazette, March 26, 1763. 

3. £90 lawful money, “ for building a drawbridge in Providence so as ves¬ 
sels may pass up and down the river.” 

4. Much of the oakum used in the ship-building of the Town wa3 picked at 
the workhouse. This seems to have been the chief business of its inmates. 


224 


DANGEROUS NAVIGATION. 


was not without its dangers. On the 6th of March, 
1767, the Gazette contained a narrative which was 
repeated in days long afterwards, before human life 
had come to be as little valued as it now is. A large 
vessel which had been launched above the cove on 
the first of March, a few days later, passed through 
the draw at Weybossett. A son of Mr. David Wil¬ 
kinson, incautiously looking out from the cabin, was 
instantly crushed and killed amid the horror of a 
multitude of spectators, who were powerless to 
avert the catastrophe. When the bridge was rebuilt 
in 1792, a new generation had gained the control of 
the Town, and the draw gave occasion to acrimoni¬ 
ous disputes in newspapers and Town Meetings, be¬ 
tween the partizans of the old and the new, and be¬ 
tween the North and South ends, and the East and 
West sides. 1 But the West and the South united 
were not yet strong enough to overthrow the su¬ 
premacy of the North end, and the draw was for the 
last time rebuilt. 2 Few vessels were now launched 

1. This belongs to the paper upon the Town Meeting. 

2. The new bridge of 1792 was one hundred and sixty feet long, twenty-two 
feet wide, and was supported by two wooden tressels and by two stone pillars. 
Morse’s Geography, London ed., pp. 341-2. 


THE WHIPPING-POST. 


225 


in the cove, and the Town soon afterwards parted 
without regret, from this cradle of its early naviga¬ 
tion. 

Soon after the Town had gathered around its 
present commercial centre, the citizens resolved to 
make their chief place of concourse a school of in¬ 
struction in sound morals. The public whipping¬ 
post, was therefore established upon the Great 
Bridge, where its admonitions could be profitable to 
the greatest number. The Gazette occasionally 
chronicles an execution of this sort. The Town 
Council found in it an effectual means of grace for 
those who showed any disrespect for its authority. 
Their example was followed by the sheriff of the 
county. In lack of any reformatory institutions, 
this was the statutory penalty for sundry criminals 
who might profit by it at the present day. It had 
the certain advantage of driving offenders into other 
States. The discipline of those days was no mere 
formality. The Gazette of June 25, 1767, describes 
a moral spectacle of this kind, of more than usual 
edification. After it, the convict was sold for one 
year to make reparation for the property which he 


226 


THE WEST SIDE. 


had stolen, and to pay the state its costs. The re¬ 
porter mentions that the yells of the patient, resound¬ 
ing through the neighborhood gave evidence of the 
conscientious discharge of the duty of the constable. 1 
The exhibition was not infrequent after every term 
of the court, until the end of the first ten years of 
this century. It then became a subject of complaint, 
not as offending the sensibilities of the townsmen, 
but as a hindrance to business. It was then removed 
to the Court House parade, where it continued in 
full activity during twenty years more. 

The growth of the "West side,” was preceded by 
the settlement of the Proprietary lands, and by 
the formation of new towns. In the earlier part of 
the last century, "the compact part of Providence 
Town ” had become a seaport, with commercial and 
quarantine regulations, and with ever increasing dis¬ 
putes with its agricultural population, west of the 
"seven mile line.” The estate of the Proprietors 

1. The spectacle was sometimes varied by the addition of the pillory, or the 
process of cropping and branding. This was particularly frequent after the 
Revolution, when the deficiency of the circulating medium tempted some ill- 
advised citizens to supply it by the manufacture of counterfeit coin. See April 
2, 1785, September 17, 1785. 


NEW HIGHWAYS. 


227 


had been, in great part, disposed of. New high¬ 
ways were opening towards every part of the county, 
and a new population created a demand for shops 
and inns on the west side. The Town Council had 
now more occupation than ever before. In 1749, 
another road towards Warwick was ordered, with 
the old indefinite bounds and direction, and with 
the like opportunity to the committee to serve their 
own interests. The state of improvements on the 
west side may be conjectured from the phraseology 
of this last vote. The new road to Warwick was to 
commence "from the parting of the paths, by John 
Hoyle’s house ”—then on the borders of the wood¬ 
lands,—and was to run thence southward to Paw- 
tuxet. Yet another highway in the same direction, 
was ordered in 1750. 

The opening of Benefit street required a number 
of new ways to connect it with the Town street. 
They were made with no system, but as private 
owners found that their interests required. The first 
of these which is mentioned in the counciFs book, 
was laid out between the houses of Thomas Harding 
and of Governor Stephen Hopkins, who was always 


228 


BANK LANE. 


active in new enterprises. This was ordered January 
11, 1752, to extend eastward to the new highway. 
Local hindrances intervened, for it was not completed 
until 1771. 1 The first bank in Providence, and the 
second in New England, was established there in 
1791, and the popular name of the thoroughfare was 
"Bank lane.” Early in this century it received the 
legal title of " Hopkins street.” The original bank¬ 
ing house yet remains there. Many of these new 
ways had long before been footpaths leading to the 
pastures or "home-lots,” and were now widened, 
defined, and converted into streets. They were* 
however, from their inferior width and importance, 
popularly called " lanes ” or " alleys.” The dates of 
some of these will indicate the quiet growth of 
Providence, even under the huge burden of Colonial 
paper bills. Some of the lateral highways from the 
Town street, were gifts from the neighbouring pro¬ 
prietors. May 25, 1762, Bowen’s alley, (now called 
Howland street,) was given to the Town by Benja¬ 
min Bowen and Nathaniel Packard, the owners of 
the adjoining lands, 6£ feet by each. In 1771, a 


1. See “ Blue Book,” in the Town Clerk’s office. 


WATERMAN STREET. 


229 


committee of the Town Meeting advised the open¬ 
ing of a highway through the estate of Amaziah 
Waterman. 1 It was first intended to be laid at some 
distance to the northward of its present site where it 
would have been an extension to Angell street. The 
new street was first ordered to be laid on the north 
side of Mr. Waterman’s house. After the usual 
petition, remonstrance, protest and delay attending 
such proceedings, the street was finally established 
(November, 1772,) where it now is. In February, 
1784, it was widened to forty feet. After divers 
changes of name it has become Waterman street, 
and a memorial of one of the original proprietary 
estates of the Plantations. 

The years of prosperity between the Seven Years’ 
War and the Revolution were a time of much activity 
in local improvements. They were soon interrupted 
and were not resumed until the century was drawing 
to a close. Thus, on the sixth of May, 1771, a 
highway was ordered through the land of Ann Til- 
linghast. This was the beginning of the present 
Transit street. The name was intended as a memo- 

1. April 17. See Blue Book of streets revised, 1771. 

20 


230 


HANOVER STREET. 


rial of the observations of the transit of Venus, 
made in 1769, from the summit of the hill—the first 
scientific effort of the Town. Hanover street was 
first opened, when the meeting house, (after¬ 
wards the Town House,) was built. There had 
been previously a footpath, leading to the burial 
place of the family of Chad Brown, and to their 
pastures beyond. The original street was scarcely 
twenty feet wide. The Town House had, during 
many years, a grass plat on its north front, on its 
west side was the burial place. Both disappeared 
when Hanover street was widened in 1790. Thence¬ 
forth the Town House abutted upon the highway. 
This was now twenty-eight feet wide. The name 
was given in honour of the reigning family of Great 
Britain. It lasted about eighty years. On the 21st 
of April, 1772, the Town Council ordered that 
Stephen Hopkins, Joseph Brown and Caleb Harris 
lay out a highway from Benefit street to the College 
land. This was at the request of the College, two 
of its chief officers being of the committee. This 
was the original College street. Hanover street re¬ 
tained its Colonial name more than thirty years 


LANES AND ALLEYS. 


231 


longer. It is so styled on Daniel Anthony’s map of 
1803. In 1806 it was changed to College street. 1 

This, with the loss of the colonial designation of 
King street shows something of the character of the 
times, the indifference to historical relics, and the need¬ 
less apprehension of the spread of monarchial ideas. 

In 1772, several new lanes were ordered, from the 
Town street to the water side. One of these was on 
the south side of Oliver Arnold’s brick house just 
above the Court House parade. So many years had 
gone by since the old dispute over these ancient 
alleys that it may well surprise us that the townsmen 
persisted in repeating their mistake,—that they had 
learned so little of the requirements of trade, and 
had made no progress in sanitary knowledge. 

On the 4th of May, 1772, the Town Council or¬ 
dered a highway to be made from Olney’s lane over 
the summit of the hill, southward to Jail lane, now 
Meeting street. The new street, like the original 
Benefit street, was to be forty feet wide. There was 

1. Council liecords. The neighbouring George street had not a colonial 
origin like Hanover street. It was not opened until 1794, (August,) and was 
named after Mr. George H. Burro ugh, a proprietor of lands in the vicinity. 


232 


PROSPECT STREET. 


a vigorous opposition because of the design of the 
projectors, to carry forward the new highway in a 
straight line through the college grounds, so that the 
building would have looked down immediately upon 
the street. The opposers were of the foremost men 
of their day. They were able to delay public action 
until the present route was accepted as a compromise. 
Prospect street was established substantially as it 
now is, September 5, 1785. Its name remains, 
although it has become wholly inappropriate. Once, 
from the highest ridge of the hill it commanded 
picturesque views in every direction over the Town 
and Bay. At present, through the want of foresight 
or public spirit in former generations, there is no 
point from which the public have a general view of 
the city or of its waters. 

After 1772, the increasing gloom of the political 
sky gave the citizens little encouragement to improve 
their highways or even their private estates. Few, 
if any, houses were built during the Revolution. 
The activity of the Town took another direction. 
The want of the most needful supplies gave a new 
impulse to home manufactures and to foreign trade. 


THE REVOLUTION. 


233 


The navigators and merchants did not forget the les¬ 
sons of the Seven Years’ War. The Marquis Chas- 
tellux 1 says that the English abandoned all other 
objects, in order to blockade the French fleet in 
Newport, and that they scarcely took a single sloop, 
coming to Rhode Island, or to Providence. The 
files of the Gazette confirm the statement, and show 
that the arrivals and departures of vessels were 
numerous throughout the war. Privateering aug¬ 
mented several fortunes, and furnished some foreign 
supplies. But with all its compensations, the Town 
stood still until the war was at an end. The earliest 
effect of peace was a farther division and improve¬ 
ment of the old home-lots. On the 8th of July, 
1782, and 5th of May, 1783, a road was ordered to 
be laid out " from the Baptist Meeting-House to the 
head of Ferry lane.” The chief promoters of the 
design were Moses Brown and Nathan Waterman, 
the principal landholders of the neighborhood. The 
engineering difficulties were so great, in proportion 
to the means at their command, that the work was 
not completed until May 5, 1788. It was com- 


1. Memoirs, vol. I>, p» 202. Translation. 


234 


ANGELL STREET. 


mended by the Gazette of that day as a wonderful 
evidence of public spirit. It did not occur to the 
writer that Messrs. Brown and Waterman were 
adding quite as largely to their own, as to the pub¬ 
lic wealth. 

It would appear from the records of deeds, as 
well as from old houses yet remaining, that the in¬ 
tervening cross streets were largely built up and 
occupied before Benefit street had any inhabitants 
except at its north and south ends. This was its 
condition when the Marquis Chastellux saw it in 
1780-2. He says that Providence "has only one 
street which is very long, the suburb which is very 
considerable, is on the other side of the river.” 
" The Town is handsome. The houses are not spa¬ 
cious, but well built, and properly arranged within.” 
His description becomes less flattering as he proceeds 
to say, "its commerce is chiefly distilling and the 
slave trade,” with which, however, neither he nor 
any one else found any fault at that day. Chastellux, 
as second in command to Rochambeau, had ample 
experience of the hospitality of the dwellers in the 
Town street, and he was not wanting in due acknowl¬ 
edgment. 


BOWEN STREET. 


235 


Bowen street is of 1786. It was named from the 
distinguished physician who had long owned the 
estate through which it passes. The property had 
been, (1785,) purchased by Philip and Zachariah 
Allen, who were the authors of this improvement of 
the neighborhood. In preparing the ground near 
the Town street, a discovery was made such as would 
now attract much attention from local antiquaries. 
The site was, in 1785, part of a kitchen garden. 
In puling up a cabbage, an astonished workman 
found an Indian skull entangled in its roots. Farther 
research disclosed many Indian skeletons and uten¬ 
sils. The spot had been a burial place or a battle¬ 
field, in pre-historic times. The existence of this 
place of sepulture had been unknown and unsus¬ 
pected. It awakened some curiosity, but as was 
usual in much later days, no care was taken to pre¬ 
serve the remains. No Indian was left, to relate 
any tradition of their date or history. 

With the increasing commerce of the port, came 
a demand for new houses at the southend. In 1790, 
the Town Council appointed a committee to open 
highways eastward from the Town street, between 


236 


TOCKWOTTON. 


Power and Transit streets. But notwithstanding 
every endeavor to stay the westward progress of the 
Town, very few houses had, as 3’et, been built east¬ 
ward of Benefit street. Lieutenant-Governor Daniel 
Abbott, the chief land-holder of his day, (who died 
in 1760,) was a man of enlightened forecast. He 
had laid out streets at Tockwotton, by a plat which 
may be seen in the City Clerk’s office. But he was 
far in advance of the commercial necessities of his 
time. A generation went by before his hopes were 
fulfilled. About the year 1790, John Brown, one 
of the foremost American merchants of his day, 
availed himself of the advantages of the site, and 
built the first wharves and storehouses in the local¬ 
ity now called India point. 

So early as January, 1773, there had been a pro¬ 
ject of a bridge at the lower ferry, now India point. 
But after much discussion, in Town Meeting and 
Gazette , the difficulty of securing £1,800 needed for 
the purpose, effectually quieted the agitation. In 
1792, it was resumed by John Brown alone, and 
carried to a successful completion. It was one of 
his most useful enterprises. He gave to it the name 


WASHINGTON BRIDGE. 


237 


of the chief object of his admiration, and the ancient 
" lower ferry,” or " Fuller’s Ferry,” was succeeded 
by "Washington Bridge .” 1 Tockwotton then be¬ 
came the scene of an activity before unknown. 
Thence, the first vessels sailed from Providence be¬ 
yond the Cape of Good Hope. Rope-walks en¬ 
croached upon ancient meadows, and shipwrights 
and navigators were among the chief occupants of 
the new streets. 

The success of the new bridge soon stimulated 
another undertaking of the same kind. The old 
" upper ferry,” at " narrow passage,” had long out¬ 
lasted the generations which came slowly and at long 
intervals from Rehoboth, for a little barter trade in 
the shops of the Town street. Providence was now 

1. At the June session of the Assembly, 1792, John Brown and others re¬ 
ceived a charter of incorporation by the name of the “ Providence South 
Bridge Society, in the Town of Providence.” In June, 1807, the charter was 
amended by conforming the name of the corporation to the popular name 
which had been given to the bridge by its founder. It then became the “ Provi¬ 
dence Washington Bridge Society.” 

The “ Central Bridge,” popularly known as “ Red bridge,” had its origin in 
the same year with the bridge at the South Ferry, but it was not completed 
until a year later. A subscription for a bridge at the Upper Ferry was com¬ 
menced in 1792, and public meetings were held for the same object. See Provi¬ 
dence Gazette , Saturday, February 25,1792. 


238 


RED BRIDGE. 


the market of a large surrounding country, and re¬ 
quired an avenue not liable to obstruction by the 
waves and ice of the Seekonk. A year after the 
lower bridge had been completed, a new one, a work 
of much less cost and hazard was begun. The 
" upper ferry,” which had been an object of such 
care among the ancient townsmen, gave place to 
"Bed bridge.” It has been during three generations 
the favourite haunt of youthful fishermen, (as the 
ferry had been of a long succession of boys before 
them,) who are thus unconsciously preserving one 
of the ancient traditions of the Town. 

There was at this period, but one improvement of 
any importance at the North end. The old " Country 
road” to Pawtucket, (1684,) had curved around the 
sandhill at the burial ground, ascended it by the dis¬ 
mal thoroughfare afterwards known as Sexton street, 
and descended it on the north with another bend 
towards the east. The Town was now able to afford 
that better access, which its increasing intercourse 
with Boston required, but which had been too costly 
for the taxpayers of former days. In 1791, the 
sandhill on the east side of the burial ground was 


SEXTON STREET. 


239 


cut through, down to the present level of the high¬ 
way. There are some sufferers by every change, 
however beneficial. There was, accordingly no lack 
of wrathful speaking and newspaper writing, by 
those whose gardens were bisected, and whose houses 
and barns were left on opposite sides of the street 
when the old highway was removed to the eastward. 
But all others acknowledged the advantage. An in¬ 
creasing traffic rolled along the new avenue. The 
old one, (now Sexton street,) was left without dis¬ 
turbance to the solemnity of its funeral processions. 

Increasing commerce hastened other changes in 
the centre of the Town. There had been a row of 
wharves and docks extending into the cove behind 
the warehouses and dwellings of Cheapside. This 
unhealthy arrangement, which continued in South 
Water street until the gale of 1815, was sooner 
terminated on the north side of the bridge. A hope 
of profit fortunately concurred with sanitary require¬ 
ments. North Water street was established Febru¬ 
ary 19, 1792. Until 1814, it extended only to 
Steeple street. It was not completed in its present 
length until the days of the Blackstone Canal. Thus 


240 


THE WEST SIDE. 


was finally obliterated every trace of the ancient 
shore. 1 

This may serve as a hasty view of the growth of 
the old Town, in the closing years of the last cen¬ 
tury. After this, the east side of the " Great Salt 
River ” seemed to stand still during several years, 
while a new mart of trade was rising in full view. 
The " West side ” was now threatening speedily to 
cope with the east, both in Town meetings and in 
private enterprise. Westminster street, which in 
1771, had but four houses on its south side, hoped, 
at no distant period, to be a successful rival of the 
old Town street. Rivals appeared in the new centre 
of trade, who disputed the pre-eminence of the men 
of the last century, as these had subverted the rule 


1. In 1792, it became necessary to rebuild Weybossett Bridge. The new 
bridge was forty feet shorter than the old one, and the river-bed was narrowed 
forty feet to provide for North and South Water streets. The new bridge was 
intended to be fifty six feet wide with a draw. 

In 1811 the Town authorized the owners of warehouse lots north of Steeple 
street, to fill them up, and to make a new street as far as Smith’s bridge. Sev¬ 
eral delays and extensions of time were granted, and the street was not com¬ 
pleted until January, 1825. The street was then established as a public high¬ 
way by the name of North Water street. It was afterwards widened by the 
Canal Company, and named Canal street, almost the last remaining vestige of 
their unprofitable labours. 


THE TOWN STREET RE-NAMED. 


241 


of the old Proprietors. The closing years of the 
last century may be accounted the end of the old 
" Plantations.” The signs of a new period were on 
every side. The Town had long ago outgrown its 
infancy, needed no charity from its neigbours, was 
now the capital of a State,—and had assumed the 
form of which its present proportions are but the 
expansion and development. Its new departure was 
marked by controversies and by parties unknown to 
former generations, and which yet remain in full 
activity under the Constitution of the United States. 

A period of growth requires or facilitates changes 
to which no former generation would have given its 
assent. When Market House and Square, Post 
Office and Custom House, Town records and treasury 
had drawn the commerce of the port into their neigh¬ 
borhood, an end came at last to the venerable Town 
street. Its dissolution had, during several years, been 
foreshadowed. Yet when it finally parted asunder, 
the neighbours were long in doubt how to dispose of 
its remains. During a generation its severed frag¬ 
ments bore local names. A part of it lying north of 

King street or Gaol lane, was popularly called Wil- 
21 


242 


CONSTITUTION HILL. 


liams street, for there had been the founder’s home¬ 
stead. 1 The southern part of the Town street was 
styled by the same authority—usage—Water street. 
The tide still flowed to its sidewalk. The inconven¬ 
ience of separate titles for different parts of one 
thoroughfare, forbade their continuance. Consti¬ 
tution Hill, which, alone, of all the parts of the 
Town street, had a well-marked beginning and end, 
yet retains its popular designation. The name suf¬ 
ficiently indicates the period of its origin. The old 
hill has suffered less than any of our ancient high¬ 
ways, from the changes of three generations, and 
still affords a reminiscence of the appearance of the 
whole Town street, during the middle period of the 
last century. The long suffering of eighty years 
ago had its limits. But it may well be regretted 
that an old name of a century and a half’s duration, 
should have been superseded by those of " North ” 
and " South ” " Main ” streets—two as tasteless and 
prosaic titles as municipal perversity could devise. 
(1805.) After the gale of September, 1815, the 
ancient docks which yet remained at the South end. 


1. See Daniel Anthony’s Map, 1803. 


LANES AND ALLEYS. 


243 


were filled,—a new Water street arose, and the 
primitive " Toune streete ” forever ceased to be " the 
greate streete that lyeth by the waterside.” 1 

In 1805, the Town Council gave to the ancient 
names of many principal streets, a legal establish¬ 
ment and perpetuity. The name of " Main street ” 
was unhappily retained. " Hope street ” now first 
received the family name of the Powers, who had 
been the earliest owners of some of the adjoining 
estates. " James street” was so called in memory 
of James Arnold, the late Treasurer. "Planet 
street ” now received a legal title, and " Hopkins 
street ” superseded the former " Bank lane.” Alleys 
and lanes were promoted to the dignity of streets. 
" Gaol lane ” became " Meeting street,” " Bowen’s 
alley ” was thenceforth " Bowen street,” " Stamper’s 
lane,” a well worn footpath, in the earliest days of 
the Town, was changed to "Stamper’s street,” and 

1. During a century and a half most of the highways of the Plantations 
had borne only popular names. These were given at the pleasure of proprie¬ 
tors or of neighbours, and might have been changed at their will, to the annoy¬ 
ance or injury of future owners. See Ordinances of 14th of October, and 12th 
November, 1805. The Ordinance of 1806 was only an amendment or revision 
of that of November, 1805. 


244 


STREET NAMES. 


such let it ever remain, as a memorial of the priva¬ 
tions of the early settlers. It was described in the 
ordinance of 1805, as lying immediately west of the 
Montgomery tavern. This was an old Revolutionary 
rallying point, at which, during many years, youth¬ 
ful patriotism was stimulated by the view of a grim 
effigy of General Montgomery. There are few, if 
any, now living who can recall either the portrait or 
the inn. Townsmen of note in their day thought to 
preserve their names by affixing them to the ways 
which they had once frequented. "Arnold street” 
was a memorial of Christopher Arnold; "John 
street,” of John Innes Clarke. " Benevolent street,” 
" George street,” and " Howland’s alley,” now became 
legal titles. "Williams’ street” had been opened by 
the Thayer family in 1794, and, in default of any 
other memorial of him, was named by them from 
their ancestor, the founder. It should not have been 
left to his own descendants to furnish his memorial. 
It should have been a grand and central avenue, to 
be in after days the chief place of concourse and 
procession, and more worthy of the Town than that 


STREET NAMES. 


245 


which bears the unmeaning title of Westminster 
street. 

In but few instances were the names newly given 
in 1805. They were chiefly old popular titles now 
established by law. However we may censure the 
bad taste of some of them, we may still be grateful 
to the town government that it left behind it so much 
that serves to connect the present with the past. 
More than in many other cities, old highways and 
localities in Providence preserve the memory of those 
who first gained them from the wilderness. The 
names of the ancient proprietors, contemporaries of 
Williams and Harris, of Olney, Abbott and Power, 
who bore the first burdens, and aided the first pros¬ 
perity of the town, are yet kept alive in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of their ancient homesteads. We may hope 
that modern fancies will not disturb associations 
respected by so many generations of their suc¬ 
cessors. 

During these long years of a colony nominally 
subject to a monarchical regime, we may note, 
even in these trivial things, how slightly the senti¬ 
ment had entered into the affairs of common life. In 


246 


STREET NAMES. 


the earlier years of the house of Brunswick, when 
the British crown was surrounded by a halo of popu¬ 
larity brighter than ever before or since, no square 
or highway received the name of English king or 
statesman. Even rebellious Boston was more histo¬ 
rical. There was never in Providence, as in so many 
American towns, any Chatham street, Crown street, 
William street, Prince street, or Nassau street. One 
ancient way divided the popular voice between the 
rival appellations of "King street” and " Gaol lane.” 
The founders had brought with them—far less than 
in most of the other colonies—few of the monarchical 
or even the historical elements of their social or po¬ 
litical life. The home government did nothing to 
strengthen or increase them, and at the first strain 
upon the ties which bound together the old country 
and its dependency, they parted without regret, 
and forever. 

From such materials as were attainable, I have in 
this paper attempted some description of the outward 
and material growth and aspect of the Plantations in 
their earlier days. In a reproduction of scenes long 
since faded away, little aid is afforded by contempo- 


WANT OF MATERIALS. 


247 


raneous letters or descriptions. Our chief resort is 
to records, which, however dry and fragmentary, are 
at least authentic, and which exhibit men’s thoughts, 
passions and prejudices, as embodied in their public 
acts. It will always be a subject of regret that 
through their poverty or religious scruples, we have 
no representations of the founders or of their abodes. 
Much history is preserved in portraiture, and even 
in the outlines of buildings, however rudely sketched. 
Without such aid, descriptions of life and manners 
drawn from legal records lose much of their distinct¬ 
ness and effect. Careful research is recovering illus¬ 
trations from documents now carefully preserved. 
But still the founders of Rhode Island will be seen 
only in outlines shadowy and indistinct. One phase 
of colonial life in the seventeenth century—one form 
of the reaction against puritanism, is known chiefly 
through the representations of its enemies. The 
disputes and rivalries of the town street and the town 
mill, the homely jests, quaint criticisms or bitter de¬ 
nunciations by which those earnest if unlettered 
theologians characterized each others’ doctrines or 
manners, the first attempts at enjoyment after the 


248 


LOSS OF MATERIALS. 


existence of the Plantations had become secure,—all 
these have perished beyond recall. When antiqua¬ 
rian curiosity was at last excited, the materials for a 
reconstruction of the past were beyond its reach. 
Volumes of obsolete controversy are but indifferent 
substitutes for pictures of early colonial life such as 
are afforded by the journals of Winthrop and Fox. 

In this attempt to describe the outward and mate¬ 
rial aspect of the Plantations, it seemed best to begin 
with the lines laid down by the chain and compass of 
the first surveyors, and to follow the primitive high¬ 
ways as they pierced the wilderness. These show 
with sufficient clearness the first planters’ conception 
of their work, and their hopes of what in time it 
might become. These show us also, those hopes ad¬ 
vancing slowly towards fulfillment, and how they 
have been changed or disappointed. In some future 
papers I may say something of the men who once 
trod these ancient pathways, of the controversies 
which divided them, and how, in spite of all they 
could do to the contrary, they at last built up a pros¬ 
perous colonial town. From the recital of what 
went on in these old thoroughfares, it will appear 


HISTORICAL SCENES. 


249 


that they were far from being such dull and weari¬ 
some places as a view of more modern colonial life 
might tempt us to believe. The old provinces were 
planted b} r men who were not mere imitators or 
copyists. Their ideas were constructive and some¬ 
times original. They knew that Europe could not 
be transplanted, but that the social and political in¬ 
stitutions of a new country must have the flavour of 
its own soil. 

There was never any want of liveliness in the old 
"Toune Streete.” It was the scene of nearly every 
thing which happened in the Plantations during an 
hundred and fifty years. The localities are well 
known. We can point to the "home-lot” where 
Williams entertained Miantonomo, and wrote his 
book against Fox; where, a few steps to the north¬ 
ward, Richard Scott treasured up his wrath until 
the time came to pour out his vial; where Verin 
restrained his wife’s liberty of conscience; where 
Chad Brown remonstrated against the outrage upon 
Gorton and upon the whole colony; where Olney 
on behalf of the Plantations had his interviews with 
the Commissioners of Charles lid. ; where, at the 


250 


HISTORICAL SCENES. 


" Great Town’s Quarter Day,” the freemen gathered 
under the buttonwood tree to consult, first, for the 
security of their families, and then for the rebuild¬ 
ing of the town ; where were the ancient inns, in 
which the lawgivers of the colony provoked the cen¬ 
sure of the Privy Council, and responded by meas¬ 
ures more offensive still; where freemen of another 
generation planned the destruction of the Gaspee, 
and set free the navigation of the Bay. Many of us 
yet remember the old balcony from which two kings 
of England were proclaimed, and from which also, 
the Colony proclaimed itself free from their succes¬ 
sors, and the spot where, not many years ago, the 
old pillory and whipping-post taught a reverence for 
practical morals, such as the devices of modern 
philanthropists fail to inspire. These, and many 
like things have made the old street, in some sort, 
a historical monument. Whatever there was of self- 
denial or of self-will, of wisdom, or of absurdity, 
and we shall meet with each in its turn and measure, 
found utterance in the Town Street, and at the Town 
Mill. 

Some are yet among us who are of the last genera- 


LOCAL CHANGES. 


251 


tion which saw, while yet unchanged, the scenes 
which were familiar in colonial days. During two 
hundred years many of these remained but little al¬ 
tered, and then, the needs of commerce began to 
efface the most characteristic features of the old 
Town. Down to the building of the Worcester Rail¬ 
road, (1845,) one of the most conspicuous of these, 
the ancient cove, with its salt marshes, beds of oyster 
shells and scows, retained much of the appearance 
which it had worn when the Proprietors strove with 
the freeholders for the possession of its thatch-beds. 
But a few years have gone by since the shores of the 
Seekonk were little other than what they were in the 
days of Williams and Harris, and no vigorous effort 
of imagination was needed to recall its aspect when 
they guided their canoes across its waters. It may 
be hoped that the antiquarian zeal of some among 
us, will reproduce the documents and records of early 
days, with such aid as the photographer can yet sup¬ 
ply. After a few more years of growth and pros¬ 
perity, this will have become impracticable. 

The Town will then have resumed its southward 
movement, which began at the end of Philip's war. 


252 


THE FUTURE. 


At this centennial period, we may be permitted to 
predict the future in the light of the past. Gazing 
forward across another hundred years, we may catch 
the distant murmur of the next celebration, thronged 
by the far greater multitudes of a new city far be¬ 
low the " Great Salt River,” and looking out upon 
the broad waters of the Bay. Its avenues, parks, 
and piers have superseded the present centres of 
concourse and exchange, as these succeeded to the 
" warehouse lots ” of former days. The highways 
which listened to the disputes of Proprietors and 
freeholders, and of town and country have lapsed 
into something of their ancient quietude, and "home- 
lots ” have reasserted their ancient rights against 
present places of trade. We may hear afar off, the 
music of a centennial procession wending its way 
through streets to be established by unborn council- 
men, amid the sighs of a yet unassessed generation. 
As in their turn, the partakers in that coming an¬ 
niversary recount the achievements of their century, 
they will look back upon the enterprises, hopes and 
disappointments of the present time, as upon those of 
"a day of small things.” Let us hope that they will 


THE FUTURE. 253 

also regard its acrimony and strife with something 
of the charity with which we remember the contro¬ 
versies of the Town Street and the Town Mill. 


22 















































































INDEX 


-♦- 

PAGE. 

Abbott, Col., Still-house .194—141 

Abbott, Daniel, Col.91 

Abbott, Daniel, Lieut-Governor.236 

Abbott House. j, .162 

“ “ Sold to Jabez Bowen.215 

Acquetneck, ready to unite with Massachusetts. 2 

Allen, Zachariah, His Dwelling-house.199 

Ancient Grist-Mill, Law Suits... 52 

Andirons appear. 168 

Angell Family Lots.37 

Angell, James, His Distill House. .213 

Angell, John Anthony, Stone-cutter.222 

Angell, William P., his lands.185 

Anthony, Daniel, Map of 1803. 85 

Antram, William, The Houseing belonging to.141 

Arnold, James, Death by Yellow Fever.144 

Arnold House, of 1726 .161 

Arnold, Richard, Land granted to, for a Saw-mill.50 

Arnold, Thomas.67 

Arnold, Welcome, His House.221 

Arnold, Oliver, His Brick House.. 231 

Back street, or Benefit street.149 

Bank, The first one established.228 

Beard, The fashion of wearing.165 

Belknap, Benjamin, receives £300 for Damages for Benefit street land.152 

Benefit street, a Petition for opening.147 

Benefit street, Gate maintained across the North end.152 































256 


INDEX 


Bernon, Gabriel, His House one of the earliest on the west side of Town 

Street.114 

Bernoon, Manna, an Emancipated Slave.177 

Bewitt’s Brow, where was it?..70 

Bezoar Stone, a Medical Drug.-.178 

Biles, Capt. Samuel-...149 

Blackstone Canal.51 

Blackstone, W., and his neighbors. 75 

“ “ The only Neighbors of the Settlement. .... 7 

Bowen, Benjamin. 228 

Bowen, Dr. Ephraim, His House.202 

Bowen, Dr Jabez, Declines compensation for land occupied for Benefit St. .151 

Bowen, Dr. Jabez, His services as a Physician.121 

Bowen, Jabez, Owner of the Abbott House.215 

Bowen Street, an Indian burial ground in. 235 

Bricks, Thomas Staples requests permission to dig clay to make.131 

Bricks used as a building material.220 

Bridge across the Mooshasic, 1662... 67 

Bridge, The first one.... 67 

Bridges in sundry places...237 

Bridle paths through the Forests.124 

Brown, Chad, Joins the Colony... 8 

Brown, Chad, His Burial Ground, now College Street.47—230 

Brown, Elisha, Lieut.-Governor, His Brick House.209—220 

Brown, Elisha, Lieut.-Governor, His Mill.154 

Brown, John, a Foremost Merchant.236 

Brown, John Carter, The Dwelling House of. .210 

Brown, Joseph, His House.221 

Brown, Moses, His House.162 

Brown, Nathaniel, House on Church Street.26 

Brown, Nathaniel, The first Shipwright. 117 

Brown, Nicholas, Lays Corner-Stone of the Market House, (afterwards 

City Hall,) 1773.203 

Brown, Obadiah, His Inventory.. 

































INDEX. 


257 


Brown, John.07 

Browne, Richard, His House.63—220 

Bucklin, David, Liberty to erect a Public Market.201 

Burial Ground on the West side established in 1769.129 

Canal Street.210 

Carew, Samuel, Tavern Keeper.'.216 

Carter, John, a Pupil of Dr. Franklin.198 

Carter, John, His House in Meeting street.219 

Carter, John, Publisher of the Gazette.197 

Cat Swamp in 1668... 70 

Cattle, Reasons for the slow Acquisition of..57 

Cattle, The Town well supplied in 1619.86 

Cattle, The Value of in 1636.. 58 

Chace, Samuel, The First Post Master, 1758.199 

Chairs, An Infrequent Luxury.28 

Chairs begin to be common in 1720..168 

Chastellux, The Marquis of, Describes Providence.231 

Church Bell, King’s Church, the first, 1730.112 

Claggett, Thomas, Notice of School of.157 

Clark and Nightingale.199 

Clock, The First Town or Public, 1770.112 

Clocks and Watches.170 

Clocks and Watches, none in Rhode Island in 1672.110 

Coddington, Arnold, His Stock of Goods for Sale in 1715.172 

Coddington, W., Governor, The House of, at Newport.27 

Collins, Richard, Town pays his Physician’s Bill. 121 

Comstock, Gideon, To free the Highway from Incumbrances.112 

Connecticut, The Fear of Absorption by, at an end.125 

Constitution Hill.21—212 

Court House, Cellars Advertised for Stores.156 

Court House in Gaol Lane, 1731.83 

Court House, Its Size, Cost, etc. 156 

Court House, The Struggle for the Location of.155 

Cove, A Ford across the. 66 




































258 


INDEX 


Crawford Family Burying Ground.47 

Crawford, Freelove, (daughter of Arthur Fenner,) Her Personal Estate... .107 

Crawford, Gideon, Death, 1707.106 

Crawford, John, Has the first Wine Glasses. .171 

Crawford, John, Ships Launched near his House.54 

Crawford Street projected.140 

Crawford, William, died 1720. 162 

Crawford, William, His Personal Estate.167 

Crown CotTee House.211 

Cushing, Benjamin, His House.219 

Custom House.219 

Dexter, Gregory, A Chief Landholder. 70 

Dexter, Gregory, His Dwelling place.41 

Dexter, Knight, His Shop.210 

Dexter, Stephen, His Personal Effects.30—174 

Dexter’s Lane, now Olney street .50 

Distilleries in Providence.207 

Downer, Silas, A Graduate of Harvard.216 

Dwight, T., Criticism of Rhode Island Highways.126 

Dyre, Mary, Hanged for Quakerism on Boston Common. 40 

Dyre, Mary, Her Dwelling Place near St. John’s Church.40 

Earl, William, At the Sign of the White Bear.214 

Edmunds, Andrew, Grant of Land to. 78 

Fair, An Annual, Established in 1696.190 

Family Burying Grounds. 47 

Fenner, Arthur, Captain. 75 

Fenner House.162 

Fenner, Joseph.83 

Fenner, Richard.83 

Fenner’s Square.206 

Ferry Lane, the Highway leading to Red Bridge.21 

Fields, the Home Lots of the. 36 

Fields, Their House, the Garrison House, its Fortification. 37 

Fire Arms, Refusal of Massachusetts to sell to Rhode Island. 62 




































INDEX 


259 


First Proprietors, Repugnance to new Settlers.136 

Foote, An Englishman proposes to set up Iron Works.64 

Franklin House, built 1820.105 

Fuller’s Ferry.237 

Furniture possessed by the Earliest Settlers.29 

Gaol House. 26 

Gaspee, Place where her Destruction was Planned.221 

George Street, Origin of the Name....231 

Gibbs, Dr. Robert, His House...178 

Gibbs, Robert, Petitions for Benefit street...147 

Gibbs, Robert, To Lay out Highway.142 

Goddard, Sarah and William.197 

Gold Buttons. 172 

Gold-Headed Canes.172 

Gold Ring with Fire Sparks, supposed to be Diamonds.172 

Gorton, Samuel, Massachusetts Soldiers plunder His Lands.60 

Gorton, Samuel, Treatment of by Massachusetts. 2 

Grave Stones, The first cut.222 

Great Salt River.240 

Green, James, at the Sign of the Elephant.208 

Greene, John, a Physician.119 

Grist-Mill first set up.48 

Hacker, Hoystead, His Newport Packets.214 

Hand-Looms, or Loombs, or Lumbs not infrequent in 1740.169 

Hanover Street, now College Street.37—230 

Harding, Thomas........... .227 

Harris, Caleb, To Lay out Highway.230 

Harris, Jack, (a negro man so-called,) His Inventory.176 

Harris, William, Has the nfbst extensive Library in the Colony.163 

Harris, William, His Household and its Comforts.31 

Harris, William, His Legal Knowledge. 7 

Harris, William, One of the first Surveyors of the Wilderness. 4 

Hart, Joseph, Sold for three Years for Stealing.208 

Hayward, (Hay-scales,) Established.157 







































260 


INDEX. 


Hearndon’s Lane, its locality... 70 

Highways, Great and Valuable Changes in 1738.....HI 

Highways, Lottery granted for the first Pavements.••.. 93 

Highways, The Earliest.H—73 

Highways, The Extent of Pavements in 1771. 93 

Highways, The Fencing of, Ordered ..82 

Highways, The first Sidewalks.93 

Highways, The Labors to be Performed on.88 

Highways, The new Ones Laid out.123 

Highways, The Town assumes Control of. .92 

Highways, The width of to be Four Poles.21 

Holyman, E. 20 

Home Lots, The Allotment of. 17 

Home Lots, To be Five Acres. 19 

Hope Street Named.21—243 

Hopkins, Captain William, Clark of the Market.191 

Hopkins, Governor Stephen...227 

Hopkins, Stephen, counts the Houses iu Providence, 1732 .158 

Hopkins, Stephen, Petitions for Opening Benefit street.149 

Hopkins, William, Captain. 75 

Hopkins, William.139 

Horse-Carts, common in 1700.123 

Houses, Few built during Revolution.232 

Houses, The number of in Providence, 1732. 158 

Houses, The first built. 16 

Houses, The first described. 24 

Houses at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century. 26 

Houses of the old Residents.161 

Howmrd, Ezra W., His House.178 

Howell, Martha, vs. Town of Providence. 52 

Hoyle, John, House at the Parting of the Paths.227 

Indian Drunkenness Endangers the whole Community.180 

Indian Mortar, The only means of Grinding Corn.48 

Indian Thefts make Property insecure. 43 




































INDEX. 261 

Inventories, The Minuteness of.164 

Jackson, Daniel, Brass-founder..158 

Jail Lane. 22—231 

James Street named. . .243 

Jenckes, Daniel, Petition for opening Benefit street.148 

Jenckes, Judge, His Book-shop.197 

Jenkins, Jeremiah Fones, Ilis Shop and His Business success.209 

Jones, Dr. John, Town pays His Bill when He cures His Patient... .121 

King Street.22—241 

King’s Church (now St.John’s) Bell.112 

King’s Church (now St. John’s) Established.136 

Kitchen Utensils become common .29—169 

Knight, Madame, Journey from Boston to New York.84—123 

Land Dividends among the First Proprietors. 43 

Lanes and Alleys, Names of.. 243 

Lindsey, Benjamin, Lures the Gaspee to Distinction.214 

Looking-glasses First Appear in 1720.168 

Looking-glasses, some of £30 cost in 1750.174 

Louisquissuck, a Highway.75 

Manchester, Thomas, His Inventory. 196 

Manton, Shadrack, The Town Clerk, His Dwelling place.41 

Marble Cutters in Providence .223 

Market Square named . 241 

Market Square preserved.141 

Masonic Hall .204 

Massachusetts, Her treatment of the Colony of Rhode Island. 2 

Mathewson, Nathan, House and Land. 127 

Meeting Street.231 

Meeting Street, The former Names of.22 

Miantonomo at Williams’s House. 25 

Montgomery Tavern. 244 

Moosliassuc Falls, The Centre of the Town. 36 

Moosliassuc Floods destroy Highways and Dwellings.53 

Mooshassuc, The name of tbe River given to surrounding Lands. 5 




































262 


INDEX. 


Mowry, Roger, Appointed to keep a Tavern in 1655.182 

Muddy Dock, now Dorrance street.93 

Negroes, Auction sales at the old Inns.207 

North Burial Ground laid out. 46 

North Water Street. 239 

North Woods, The Men of the.43 

Numbering the Houses.217 

Observation Rock, Where was it?.. 70 

Olney, Epenetus, A Home-lot given Him.67—71 

Olney, Epenetus, Keeps an Inn.183 

Olney, James, His death, 1744, His Personal Effects.174 

Olney, James, Land for a Court House. 155 

Olney, James, Notice to Delinquent Subscribers to the Providence Street 

Lottery.128 

Olney, Jeremiah, Col., His House.193 

Olney, Joseph, at the Sign of the Golden Bull.214 

Olney, Joseph, Dedicates a great Tree before his Inn, a Liberty Tree.192 

Olney Tavern. 71 

Olney, Thomas, Jr.19—67 

Olney, Thomas, Sen., His House described.25 

Olney, Thomas, Sen., Locality of His Home Lot.. 38 

Olney, Thomas, One of the first Surveyors of the Settlement. 4 

Olney, Thomas, The Successor of Williams in the Religious Society, His 

Library. 163 

Olney’s Lane. 22 

Orchards planted on every Home Lot.44 

Oyster House, The first one Established.177 

Packard, Nathaniel.228 

Palmer, George. 67 

Patmos, Name proposed by Williams for Newport. 9 

Pawtucket, The first Highway thereto. 76 

Pawtuxet Meadows attract Settlers.42 

Pelham, Thomas, His Tobacco Shop..211 

Periwigs of English Manufacture common in 1716—20.168 


































INDEX. 


263 


Perrigo, Robert, Cordwainer.214 

Pestle and Mortar, the Sign of the.217 

Pillions common in 1700.123 

Pitch wood for Candlelight.. 

Plainfield, Conn., A Highway towards, projected.125 

Post Master, The first one, 1758. 190 

Power’s Lane, gates across. 83 

Power’s Lane, One of the first Highways.22 

Power, Nicholas.82—130 

Power, Nicholas, Death in 1743, His Personal Effects.174 

Pray, Richard, Appointed to Keep a Tavern in 1G55.182 

Providence, First signs of growth in the old Town.133 

Prudence Island, The Stock Farm of Providence in the early years. 13 

Providence Library.156 

Providence Neck. 21 

Providence Plantations, The Founding of. 3 

Providence Settlement, A Close Corporation.136 

Providence Street Lottery.128 

Razor, The first one in the Colony.165 

Read, John, A free Negro, His Inventory.177 

Red Bridge succeeds the Upper Ferry.. 21 

Red Bridge.237 

Red Bridge Receives a Name.132 

Reservation of Lands, (see p. 101).145 

Rhode Island refuses to expel the Quakers.64 

Rhodes, Zachariah, Marries a Daughter of Roger Williams.42 

Rogers, James, has Silver Shoe Buckles.166 

Russell, Jonathan, at the Sign of the Black Boy.216 

Russell, Joseph and William.199 

Itutenberg, Daniel, His Mill on the Woonasquatucket.146 

Sabin, Thomas, His Boston Stage Coaches.211 

Savary, John, His Personal Effects.174 

Saw Mill set up in 1705. 50 

Scott, John, Petition for Highway to Mr. Blackstone’s River. 70 






































264 


INDEX. 


Scot, Richard, The Persistent Enemy of Williams.39 

Seines not to be set above the Great Bridge in Providence river.135 

September Gale of 1815, A great Benevolent Destructiveness.145 

September Gale of 1815, its effect. 240 

Seven Mile Line, The new Settlements reach the.123 

Sexton Street.239 

Shepard, George, Grants Land for a Bridge.105 

Ship building near Mill Bridge .54 

Ship-building on the Mooshassuc. .223 

Shoe Buckles, Silver in 1719.1G6 

Short Alley. 150 

Signs, Emblems and Devices of Shop-keepers.208 

Smith, Edward. .. .67 

Smith, John, has two chairs .. .28 

Smith, John, The Miller and Town Clerk. 24 

Smith, John, The Miller, Terms of His Settlement.48 

South Woods, The Men of the.43 

Stampers Street, Origin of the Name.48 

Staples, Thomas, Requests permission to dig clay at Waybausett Hill to 

make Bricks. 131 

Steeple Street, A long Dock in 1738.141 

Steere, John. 67 

Stocks ordered to be set up, 1683.189 

Street Names, Their Origin.244 

Sugden, The Artist of Pictures in Masonic Hall.205 

Sun Dial, George Taylor to keep it in Repair.112 

Swan Point, Antiquity of the name. 70 

Tannery Established before 1671. 66 

Tar, The Town prohibits the making of. 32 

Taylor, George, The Church Schoolmaster.Ill 

Temple, Sir John, Surveyor-General.218 

Thayer, Simeon, A Wig-maker in 1763...213 

Throckmorton, John, His Legal Acquirements. 7 

Throckmorton, John, Locality of His Home-lot. 38 



































INDEX. 


265 


Thurber, Samuel, Describes the horrors of a Journey over the Road to 

Connecticut.127 

Thurston, Luke, Entertains the Town Council on the West Side.216 

Tillinghast, Ann....229 

Tillinghast, B.82 

Tillinghast, Benjamin, The Will of.. 21 

Tillinghast, Charles.139 

Tillinghast, Daniel, Notice to Delinquent Subscribers to Providence Street 

Lottery. 128 

Tillinghast, Pardon, Builds a W r are-house in 1679-80. .. 94 

Tillinghast, Pardon, The third Pastor, Died 1717.167 

Tockwotton in Providence Neck. 21 

Tockwotton, Streets laid out.236 

Tomb-stones, The first cut.222 

Town House, 1723.162 

Town Mill Law Suits.62 

Town Street, An undefined Path.96 

Towne Streete laid out. 14 

Transit Street.*.229 

Turk’s Head, Derivation of the Name. 212 

Turpin, William, (the first one,) Died 1709.187 

Turpin, William, Inventory of His Personal Effects.174 

Turpin, William, Keeps an Inn.183 

Updike, John, His House...*...219 

Upper Ferry Established 1678. .. 21 

Upper Ferry, now Red Bridge. 73 

Vandelight, Dr. David. 178 

Vandelight, Dr., The House of. 161 

Verin, Joshua. 20 

Verin, Joshua, Finds Scope for Freedom of Conscience among the old Free 

Traders of the Bahamas.. 39 

Verin, Joshua, His Home-lot. 38 

Vessels Built, 1756-1765.195 

Vessels, The first built. 136 

23 

































266 


INDEX 


Wapwaysett Bridge. 69, 84, 104 

Warehouse Lots.94 

Warehouses, The First. . 94 

Warwick, Laying out a new Road to. .*.227 

Washington Bridge.237 

Waterman, R. 20 

Waterman, Amaziah.229 

Waterman, Richard.130—139 

Watson, William, His Personal Effects.174 

Wealth, The slow acquisition of in the early Colonies. 56 

Wells, The manner of placing. 33 

Westcott, John, Butcher’s Advertisement.206 

Westminster, Name proposed of a new Town on the west side of the River .129 

Westminster Street laid out and named. 128 

Weston, Francis, Deputy to the First General Court of Massachusetts. 7 

Weybosset Bridge.. 69—104—240 

Weybosset Hill.130 

Wheaton, William, Sheriff. 156 

Wheel Vehicles common in 1700.123 

Whipping-Post established on the Great Bridge.225 

Whipple, John, an Inn-keeper, has three Chairs...28, 183 

Whipple, John, one of the Chief Land-holders. 24 

Whipple, John, to mend the Bridge. 68 

Whipple, Captain Joseph, His great Gate.149 

Whipple, Col. Joseph.82, 130 

Whipple, Samuel, To set up Stocks... 189 

Whitman, Jacob, Land and House.127 

Whitman’s Corner.212 

Wickenden, W., Name given to a Street.36 

Wilkinson, Abraham, Anti-Masonic Speech in the Market Place.205 

Wilkinson, David, His Son killed in the Draw-bridge.224 

Williams, Joseph. 75 

Williams, Roger, Authorized to receive tolls at Weybosset Bridge. 68 

Williams, Roger, Prescribes Medically for His Neighbors.120 



































INDEX. 


267 


Williams, Roger, Reasons for coming to Rhode Island.. 3 

Williams, Roger, Suffers great losses by reason of His Banishment. 11 

Williams, Roger, Voyages to His Trading House..97 

Williams, Roger, with Gov. Winslow purchases the Island of Prudence. 10 

Williams, Roger, The Burial of.. 45 

Wine Glasses, The first in Town.171 

Winslow, Edward, Gov., sends Provisions to Williams. 11 

Winslow, Edward, Gov., Visits Williams. 10 

Winsor, Samuel. 82 

Woodstock, Conn., A Highway towards. 125 

Yellow Fever visits Providence 1797, and again in 1803 and 1805.144 


THE END. 


























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